


His Latest Catch

by HeadintheCloudsForever



Category: Nancy Drew (Video Games), Nancy Drew - Carolyn Keene
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood and Injury, Blood and Violence, F/M, Graphic Description, Kidnapping, Lust at First Sight, Modern Era, Serial Killers, Stalking, Unrequited Lust
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-23
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-13 21:27:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 26,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29657556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HeadintheCloudsForever/pseuds/HeadintheCloudsForever
Summary: When Nancy Drew and Frank Hardy are kidnapped at a friend's wedding by a random quiet stranger, a man of little words, who takes an unhealthy interest in her after encountering her in Bess's dad's shop one day, it quickly becomes a fight for survival as they must find a way to sympathize with their kidnapper before they wind up dead under the man's house.Rating subject to change.
Relationships: Nancy Drew/Frank Hardy





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Hi all, and for those of you who are fans of my Nancy Drew fics over on Ff.Net, welcome back! This one of mine is less mystery-based as I got kind of burnt out on the whole 'mystery' aspect of Nancy Drew, and instead am choosing a new angle with my third fic, sort of a Stephen King-esque vibe. Survival mixed with a dash of angst/comfort/horror.
> 
> As such, this will NOT be a fluffy fic, but don't worry, I won't let anything too awful happen to my favorite red-haired sleuth and her boyfriend. I hope that you enjoy it either way!
> 
> Summary: When Nancy and Frank are kidnapped by a random, seemingly silent stranger who takes an unhealthy interest in her, it quickly becomes a fight for survival as she and Frank must find a way to sympathize with their kidnapper before they wind up dead under the man's house.

**His Latest Catch**

**By HeadintheCloudsForever**

* * *

**1**

**NANCY** furrowed her brows as the door above Bess Marvin's father's hardware shop opened, causing the bell to hang above the door to tinkle, signaling the arrival of a new customer into her best friend's father's shop.

Bess was home sick with the stomach flu, and Fridays were her and Bess's younger brother's days to help out her dad at the shop, but as Bess was at home sick and her boyfriend, Nick, was taking good care of her, Nancy volunteered to take her place when Bess had called in between vomiting spells to ask a favor and had walked to the store that morning, not anticipating the storm that blew its way, almost announced into their small town.

If she would have known River Heights was going to get hit with a blizzard, she would have taken her car, but the weather had been just fine this morning. The skies above had been dulling and grievous, yes, but nothing that had promised a storm of this caliber, not even when she had checked the weather before heading over.

Nancy, naturally, being the kind-hearted young woman and good friend that she was, hadn't hesitated and had quickly agreed, eager to do whatever she could to help out poor Bess.

The snow had been coming down hard for so long that she and Bess's dad had been of the mind that anyone wouldn't be coming into their hardware store today, but she could see she was wrong in her initial assessment.

Nancy quickly put down the latest Charlena Purcell romance novel she'd been secretly working her way through (Bess had suggested it, though she'd _die_ before she'd _ever_ admitted to anyone else that she was quickly becoming a Purcell fan!) and shoved the little paperback book into the main compartment of her black messenger bag and shoved her bag underneath the front counter with the edge of her black boot, focusing her attention on the man who had just walked in.

When the weather in River Heights got this bad, Bess's dad was _lucky_ to only get one to two customers a day, at _best_ , and more to the point besides, only locals here in town came in here.

Which made the stranger standing in front of the entryway, patting at some snow that had fallen onto his shoulders that much more intriguing, and _more_ than a little bit suspicious to the nineteen-year-old amateur detective.

She furrowed her eyebrows. Nancy slowly rose from her stool from behind the counter (Bess's father was in his office balancing the business ledger) and moved to move out from behind the front counter to greet the customer, but Bess's younger brother, Jake, bounded forward on the heels of his sneakers and intercepted her before Nancy so much had a chance to part her lips open to speak to this fellow.

Her face fell, crestfallen, as Jake shot his sister's best friend a triumphant little smirk as he had beat her to greeting their newest customer, eager for someone to talk to, as he'd already finished his comic book.

The day so far had been dragging on, with only old Mr. Jenkins coming in just before the blizzard had started, and so Nancy was more than happily surprised when the strange man had sauntered in, happy for the customer's business.

Nancy huffed in frustration and settled back down behind the cash register, propping her elbows up on the smooth black countertop and resting her cheeks in her hands in an irritable manner, observing the tall, dark-haired stranger as Bess's brother moved forward shamelessly, not shy at all to greet this new guy.

"Hey, man, how's it goin' today? Bit chilly out, huh?" Bess's brother, Jake, asked the stranger as the man clad entirely in black slowly swiveled his head to look at Bess's brother before turning back around, his gaze seemingly coming to rest and fixate on Nancy, and the gesture sent a chill of fear and dread down her spine.

She wasn't sure what this guy's deal was.

It normally wouldn't be strange to see a man in his mid to late thirties with a thick black knit cap on his head, not in this brutal winter storm, nor with a thick black coat and gloves, but the fact that he didn't bother to remove his sunglasses the moment he stepped through the door struck as Nancy as incredibly odd and a little suspicious.

And she knew a thing or two about odd and suspicious types, having encountered more than a few of them throughout her experience on several different cases, though working a case was the furthest thing from her mind over Frank's winter break.

What was even more troubling, the young woman thought as she silently surveyed the odd scene in front of her to her left was the stranger's puzzling reaction towards Bess's kid brother.

The man's cheeks were red, his hair windblown, the snow that he'd gone to painstaking lengths to brush off his shoulders had now begun to melt into a puddle in front of his black boots.

When the man did not initially respond to Jake's greeting, the kid took that as his sign to continue, either missing completely or ignoring the little withering warning glower Nancy shot him.

"So, um, is there anything I can help you find, sir?" Bess's bored brother asked the black-clad stranger as he followed the man along the edge of the wall, who was seemingly interested in fencing wire. "First time here?" he asked, to make a conversation.

"Jake," Nancy called out warningly, remaining unmoved and still as a statue behind the counter, though she did offer her best friend's younger brother a curt shake of her head no. " _Don't_."

Jake Marvin paused, blinking owlishly at Nancy's firm insistence for a moment, not quite getting it, but then the kid was only eight, so she figured he wouldn't have caught onto her look.

Jake merely winked at the young redhead before turning his attention back to the man, who still made no effort to lift those damned black mirror sunglasses off of his face and show himself.

To say that it unnerved Nancy greatly to no end was something of an understatement.

Briefly, she thought of venturing to the back of the store and getting Bess's dad, just to see if there was something Mr. Marvin could do about it, though she instantly felt guilty for the stab of a fear that pricked at her heartstrings as her attention was drawn to the man perusing the selection of fencing wire, his gloved hands shoved into the pocket of his coat.

Admittedly, she wasn't sure there was anything that could be done about it for now.

He'd not caused a disruptive scene, aside from the subtle fact that he was making Nancy increasingly uncomfortable, that wasn't enough of a just cause to kick him out.

To Nancy, it looked as though the guy were almost _stalking_ his way down the aisle in his absentminded search for…whatever it was that he'd ventured into Marvin's shop today for, and with Jake trailing along at the man's heels like an obedient and overeager to please little puppy dog, it was an unusual sight.

Her thin eyebrows knitted together in a worried, troublesome frown as she noticed the man looking towards the wall with wire cable.

In the dozen or so times that she'd volunteered to take Bess's shift in her father's shop, never once had she been so…put off and unnerved by a customer before now.

Nancy was quick to decide that she did not like it at all, and her uneasiness and growing sense of claustrophobia, feeling like she was trapped in this enclosed space with this man, only worsened the moment Jake Marvin opened his mouth to speak.

"So, what brings you out here today? You must _really_ be a hardcore hardware fan, then huh, if the blizzard drove you here? Nothin' better to do with your life?" he chuckled nervously, though his laughter and his breaths almost instantly died in his throat, their tongue refusing their release as the man stopped abruptly from his browsing and turned his head sharply to look back at Jake.

The dread that chilled Nancy's blood to ice in her veins worsened. She squeezed her eyes shut as a coil in her gut twisted and lurched.

_Oh, my god, could this day possibly get any worse_? Nancy, sensing danger as the man's jaw that looked like it had been pistol-whipped a time or two in the past gave a twitch, decided to immediately intervene before things got out of hand.

"Jake, why don't you go help your father count the inventory in the back and I'll take over from here?" Nancy chirped brightly, brushing her hands on the seat of her black jeans, and straightening her black and white striped sweater, plastering a strained, faux, and not at all genuine smile onto her features as she quickly (and reluctantly) strode out from behind the counter, where she hated to admit it to herself, she felt the safest from _him_.

She flinched as she knew Bess's brother had only meant it as a joke meant to lighten the undeniable tension in the atmosphere between the three of them, but unfortunately for Jake, he'd only succeeded in making things even more awkward.

Nancy could tell by the way the man's posture stiffened, how his facial muscles tensed, that he'd obviously not known or gotten the hint that Jake had attempted (and failed to make a joke) just now, and it was going to be up to her to smooth it over.

Inwardly, she grimaced at Bess's little brother's inability to make any kind of joke that wasn't rude or demeaning to another.

Jake murmured a half-hearted apology under his breath, his hands raised out in front of him as he promptly backed away, not wanting to make a scene and left Nancy to deal with the customer, though not before casting a wary glance over his shoulder as he moved to head towards the shop's back storeroom.

She shot him a sympathetic little smile and a slight incline of her head, saying that she would be just fine, and he disappeared.

There was a part of her that hoped he told Mr. Marvin what was going on and Bess's dad came out to help her.

Nancy really did not want to spend any more time around this man than was absolutely necessary if she could at all help it.

Emanating a tense exhale through her nose as she blew out a puff of her air, she grumbled darkly under her breath as the customer continued to browse along the wall of harsh barbed wire.

She wondered what project had brought him into the shop.

Nancy trailed slowly behind, careful to maintain a respectful distance, and also as much as to ease the terror wallowing in her soul.

She shook her head at Jake Marvin's antics towards this man just trying to do his shopping and perhaps take shelter from the blizzard outside.

"I'm _sorry_ for that, he's kind of insensitive at times," Nancy whispered as she passed by the guy. He shrugged.

Nervously, Nancy turned on the heels of her boots and hoped she could supplicate him some, just to see if this guy talked at all, for he'd not said a single word since venturing into the store.

For a moment, she wondered if this man was like Bess's boyfriend of around almost a year now, Nick, a mute who couldn't talk from birth, but could write and hear and of course text what he wanted.

Though the tiny little noncommittal grunt she heard the black-clad stranger emit off was enough to believe he talked.

_Just not a man of many words_ , Nancy thought bitterly, quick to recognize her bitterness was coming from a place of fear.

Though before Nancy could open her mouth to apologize, the man turned his head to look at her but didn't immediately go back to his perusing of the wall in front of him. It didn't escape her sharp, hawk-like gaze that he held a roll of duct tape in his gloved hands.

A surge of fear wafted through her spine that she knew had everything to do with this unsettling man's presence, or perhaps it was merely seeing the duct tape in front of her caused her mind to reel with snippets, flashes of past memories of almost being killed, usually bound to a chair, and held with, you guessed it, _duct tape_.

They were memoirs she'd rather _not_ think about, so she gave her head a curt little shake to try to rid her mind of them.

"Jake means well, sir," Nancy began, fumbling slightly over her words as she awkwardly twisted her fingers together in front of her middle, biting down on her bottom lip and sticking it out in a slight little pout. "He's actually a really _nice_ kid, just a—a little bit _slow_ if you get my meaning. He doesn't really know how to interact with people all that great, especially strangers, but my friend Bess and I are working with him to try to teach him how."

She wasn't really sure where this little outburst was coming from, perhaps to quell her own nervousness in front of the man in an effort to steer the conversation away from her own timidness and the uneasiness he had made poor Bess's brother feel just now.

Nancy chewed on the wall of her mouth as she watched the guy absentmindedly, in a casual manner, pluck a pair of pliers off the wall and added them to the steadily growing pile in his hands.

"Oh, here, let me help you!" she breathed, darting her gaze to the left and right before finally spotting a discarded blue shopping basket. "It looks like you're getting an awful lot of stuff, here's a basket you can put your stuff in," Nancy murmured softly.

She darted over to retrieve him the basket she had spotted and reappeared by his side almost at an instant, sure her over-eagerness to help him make his selections stemmed from the desire to ensure she saw the man's backside leave Bess's dad's shop as quickly as possible, wanting to put this encounter behind her.

He took the basket from her, placing his items inside it before curling his gloved fist around the handle, almost aggressively so, and as they did, their fingers accidentally touched. Nancy tasted bile at the back of her throat, though she swallowed it back down and quickly retreated her hand further into herself and took a cautious half-step backward.

Nancy's brows knitted together as she saw the stranger clad in black reach for what looked to be a spool of wire, but his hand paused in mid-reach as he heard her make an odd little strangled sound at the back of her throat the moment he paused.

The stranger froze, looking sideways at her, his gloved hand stilled and not so much as twitching. It was almost eerie.

"What are you going to do with that?" Nancy asked as he picked up a different kind of wire and silently examined it. He said nothing, favoring silence as an apt response.

She was starting to doubt that this guy talked at all. Maybe the guy was a savant?

She was beginning to think that this must be the case since he'd not said a single word to either her or Jake in their combined efforts to get him to talk, the most she'd heard him say was that one little grunt.

When still, he didn't respond to the young woman's questions, Nancy tried again.

"Is it for fencing, sir? Do you have a dog you're wanting to keep penned up?" she asked, not sure where this incessant line of questioning was coming from because it really _wasn't_ her business what this guy wanted with the wire.

She glanced back over her shoulder upon hearing a slight scuffling sound coming from somewhere behind her and peeked over to see Jake, staring almost owlishly at her and the man, wide-eyed and unblinking.

Jake gave her a light shrug of his shoulders and a shake of his head, though Nancy noticed Bess's brother still looked uneasy.

She nodded. Well. That made _two_ of them.

Nancy let out a barely audible sigh and turned back around only to find the man scrawling some kind of note to himself in a small black ledger, almost like a tiny pocket address book. This gave Nancy pause.

"Well, um, if you don't need me for anything else, then I'll be behind the counter when you're ready to check out. We close in about fifteen minutes, so it looks like you came at the right time."

A nervous chuckle escaped her lips before she could stop herself, though the noise instantly died in her throat as the stranger cocked his head and looked down his nose at Nancy, his mouth pinching into a thin, unmovable line and turned down.

As the man's head moved downward as Nancy felt certain he was looking at her, assessing her form, his eyes making a quick scan of her behind those damned mirror sunglasses of his, making it impossible for Nancy to make out any details of his face or whatever expression he currently wore in his eyes, was shielded from her.

A chill wafted up and down her back and she repressed the violent shudder that passed through her, not wishing this guy to see it, as Nancy felt the unmistakable churning of her stomach as the young woman came to the realization that he was checking her out. He _had_ to be.

What _else_ could this possibly be, then, if not that? A fiery heat scorched at her cheeks as she tried to pretend she didn't bloody notice it, but it was already too late for that.

She ducked her head, a lock of her auburn hair tumbling in front of her face, having come loose from her ponytail. Normally she would have tucked it back behind her ear, though this time, she was grateful that it acted as a curtain of sorts, shielding herself from this stranger's inquisitive gaze that felt to her like his eyes, whatever they looked like behind those glasses of his, were boring holes straight into her skull, burning hotter than a branding iron ever could.

She was eager to get this man out of here and away from her as quickly as possible.

"Um, I'll be over there at the checkout counter if you've got any more questions, sir, please don't hesitate to ask me or Jake," she squeaked in a breathless sounding voice, pointing towards the counter, and, without bothering to look back behind her, bolted behind the front counter where the cash register was and made a mad grab for her bag, slinging the strap over her shoulder and grabbing her coat and hat, noticing Jake's look of worried concern.

"I'm okay," she whispered under her breath, her gaze still transfixed on the man's towering silhouette as he sauntered down the aisle, now absentmindedly perusing the toolkits. "I'm just going to go to the back and check on your dad and see if he needs any help in closing up. Will you tell me when he leaves?"

She lowered her voice just on the off-chance that the man wandering the aisles of the hardware store just happened to have incredibly sharp hearing, as well as a keen awareness of making complete, total strangers relatively uncomfortable around him.

Jake looked a little bit shocked upon hearing the note of urgency in his big sister's best friend's voice, though less so than he had initially expected to be. he cast a slightly distrusting glance towards the silent stranger and quickly nodded.

"Sure, Nance," he said, and Nancy shot him an awkward relieved little half-smile and gave his shoulder an affectionate squeeze as she turned on her heels to head toward the back storeroom to check on Tom.

Nancy found Bess's dad easily, right where she had left him earlier, pouring over their accounting ledger, his glasses sliding off the bridge of his nose, jumping a bit as Nancy rapped on the edge of his doorway with her white-boned, shaking knuckles.

"Nancy!" he exclaimed, looking a bit red in the face, and flustered, though his face relaxed into a smile as he laid eyes upon the red-haired amateur sleuth and best friend of his oldest child. "Thanks again for helping Bessie out, we owe you one, won't you _please_ let me pay you for your time? You _never_ take my money," he murmured, half-jokingly complaining to his daughter's best friend, sounding grateful, and he really _did_ look it too as he dug into the pockets of his trousers and made to hand over a crumpled wad of what looked like three twenty-dollar bills for her time.

Nancy immediately stepped into the threshold of the doorway, her cheeks flushed as her sixth sense prickled, the fine hairs on the back of her neck standing upright that told her the man from outside was watching her, she could bloody feel it.

"Th—that's not necessary, Mr. Marvin," she exclaimed, hoping her nervousness didn't sound in her voice, though she swallowed down hard past the growing lump in her throat and she felt something in her chest tighten.

She paused for a moment and breathed out an audible sigh of relief the moment she heard the tinkling of the bell above the shop door give out a soft jingle that caused her ears to perk up, and her shoulders slumped in relief.

Bess and Jake's father noticed the shift in her countenance and furrowed his brows in a frown. "You all right, Nancy? You're looking a little pale," he muttered, looking at Nancy thoughtfully.

Nancy blinked, the sound of Bess's father's deep, kind baritone pulling her from her uneasy thoughts surrounding the, well, _strange_ encounter with the stranger she'd just experienced.

"Mmm? Oh yes, I—I'm fine, Mr. Marvin, really. I don't want your money, Tom, I was happy to help you," she said, once more forcing a smile onto her face and hoping her eyes didn't betray her.

She could tell Bess's dad wasn't so easily convinced. He pursed his lips into a thin frown as he restlessly tapped his pen against his notebook and studied the young red-haired college student home for her and Frank's winter break, both of them home for the Christmas holidays, over the rim of his glasses, his frown deepening as he looked at Nancy.

"You want me to give you a lift? It's _way_ too cold for you to walk, you'll freeze to death. If you wanna stick around another five minutes, I'd be more than happy to take you home. Or we could give Bessie a call and see if she's feeling better? If she is, I'd be happy to stop by and pick up a pizza or something. You're more than welcome to stay the night with us and ride out this blizzard at our house," Mr. Marvin offered kindly, the worry seeping its way unbidden to the surface of his voice. He really didn't want Nancy walking home in this blasted winter storm all on her own.

Nancy swallowed down hard and shook her head, her fingers curling into a tight fist over the strap of her black messenger bag as she shifted it to her other shoulder to better distribute its weight.

"No thanks, I think I'll brave it, Frank is expecting me to get home, he's supposed to join me for dinner, it's our pizza and movie night, Tom, you know that," she joked weakly. "I—I'm feeling kind of light-headed. I think the crisp, cold winter air will do me a little bit of good, Mr. Marvin. It's not a far walk, and the snow looks like it's letting up a little. I'll be _fine_."

Even as the words poured from her mouth, even Nancy knew they lacked the conviction to sell the argument to Bess and Jake's dad that she really wanted to make.

She knew her friend's father still wasn't convinced by her argument, though he let out a tired sigh and almost irritably waved her away, sensing that it was fruitless to argue with Nancy once her mind was well made up.

Nancy again waved away the offer of Bess's dad's money, though relented when he rose from his desk and slipped the wad of money into one of the pockets of her sleek black pea coat without a word, silently shooting her an admonishing little look to just take the cash as payment for covering for Bess today while she was sick.

"Thanks, Mr. Marin. Tell Bess to feel better and I'll give her a call tomorrow. Hopefully, she'll be feeling better by then," Nancy called out over her shoulder, slinging her bag across her body as she adjusted her hat tightly over her head and zipped her coat up.

He hollered back from his office that he would, while Bess's little brother mumbled a cheery-enough goodbye to Nancy, though not before he made mention of the man had paid for his purchases and had told Jake to relay his thanks to her, as she strode out the hardware store's front doors, the tinkling of the little bell above the door sending a chill down her spine that had nothing to do with the blast of heralding cold that pinked her cheeks the moment she stepped out into the storm and shut the doors behind her so Mr. Marvin and Bess's brother could close up shop and head on home themselves.

As she braced herself against the bitter cold winds of winter a week and a half before Christmas, Nancy couldn't quite shake the sensation as she walked down the snow-covered sidewalk that would take her back to her and Frank's apartment complex that she was being watched.

She shivered, and _not_ from the cold, hoping it wasn't the creep from earlier _spying_ on her.

It was an uneasy feeling, one she wasn't sure that she would be brave enough to tell Frank when she got home what had happened, how the man in the store had made her feel frightened.

Surely, Nancy told herself, she was just being silly.

Despite the man's strange, aloof, if not a bit cold and distant behavior and seemingly kind words of gratitude towards her helping him today, she couldn't quite shake the feeling that something of him was _off_.

Nancy squinted over the blindingly white vast landscape of the snow-covered town of River Heights, not seeing anything unusual. Not a single person was out in this din, except for her.

Though it didn't shake the eerie, spine-tingling sensation that she still felt eyes on her. It was growing dark, the sun had long since ducked beyond the horizon by now. Anyone could be hiding out her, watching her, _spying_ on her, waiting for Nancy.

She exhaled a puff of air that turned to cold vapor the minute the air squeaked past her lips and shook her head to herself.

"Get a grip, Drew, you're turning yourself paranoid," she growled through gritted teeth, her gloved fingers curling tightly over the strap of her bag as she shuffled her way along the sidewalk, her apartment complex now in sight.

She was being utterly foolish, letting her overactive imagination and past trauma from previous cases get at her mind. This wasn't a scary movie she and Frank were watching, though that was coming up tonight over pizza.

Frank insisted on introducing her to John Carpenter's classic, _The Thing_ , over their favorite meat lovers' pizza from a local joint here in River Heights. This was _real_ life. Things like that didn't happen in real life, well, at least not to her.

She wasn't even on a case right now as it so happened, and this was River Heights, one of the quietest and frankly, most boring old towns in the entire Midwestern region.

Nothing exciting ever happened in her hometown, and Nancy sincerely hoped that it _stayed_ that way. She let out a sigh.

All throughout her walk, Nancy Drew was unable to shake the eerie and unsettling sensation of feeling another pair of eyes on her as she walked home, where Frank would be waiting for her.

Though she saw no one else out in this weather, she _felt_ it.

So, Nancy did the only thing that she could. She kept walking, and she was smart enough not to look over her shoulder.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those who made it through Ch. 1, I hope you liked it! A quick note about my OC, he's just that.
> 
> An original character/villain of my own design/mind that has nothing whatsoever to do with any of the previous villains or existing characters in the Nancy Drew universe, neither in the computer games nor the books. 
> 
> And he does not know who Nancy is or about her work as a detective (a shocker, I know) since I wanted his motives to remain purely his own, and he's not blinded by a need for revenge or vengeance against the amateur sleuth for busting him during a past crime spree or anything like that.
> 
> His motives are purely physical and psychological and creepy lol. I wanted to create a new guy who could get away with pretty much anything and not have a personality to match up with a game character or things like that.
> 
> I did sort of loosely base our baddie for this fic off of Bill Skarsgard since I think he plays such a wonderful creepy bad guy lol, (and I did just come off a binge of watching Castle Rock) and we'll be getting into our unsub's head quite a lot throughout this dark fic of mine, as he's a bit of a silent type. He DOES* talk, but well, I don't want to spoil too much, so I'll leave it at that and hope you continue to enjoy it.

**2**

**HIS** hand _burned_. It burned so bad he thought he had branded it. He couldn't explain it. He stood in the shadows, having ducked behind the corner of the old pawn shop, watching the pretty red-haired girl walk down the sidewalk, the tingling numbness that had nothing to do with the biting cold leaving thirty-year-old Devin feeling a horrible sense of conflict.

He hated this strange sensation in his chest. He reviled it. He hated the way how interacting with the pretty girl made him feel. Hated it. Hated her. And yet…he wanted more of it, too. Wanted… wanted _her_. _Just_ her.

This thought plastered as quiet vibration underneath his skin and made it crawl in pleasure.

But… at the same time, there was a strange feeling of satisfaction, a warmth seeping into the pit of his broad chest that he knew was the direct cause of the girl's fingers brushing against his, there had been that moment in the store when she'd almost accidentally touched his hand and hadn't flinched away in revolt.

Devin had _almost_ worked up the nerve to speak to her in the store, though when he'd tried when the pretty girl had asked him a question, his tongue felt heavy, almost like clay in his mouth, and he couldn't manage to string together a cohesive sentence, much less think it in his mind, until the girl had left.

The foreign feeling spiraling its way throughout his chest and up into his throat was not a feeling the young man could accurately articulate.

She had been _scared_ of him in the shop, he'd _sensed_ her fear, could almost smell the pheromones emanating off of her every pore, and even now as he followed the pretty lady home, careful to remain several paces behind her and sticking to the shadows of the various buildings that surrounded the sidewalk.

He was grateful too for the trees that lined the edge of the park that the girl was taking to cut through as a shortcut.

Devin wanted to tell the girl _not_ to be scared of him. He wasn't going to hurt her unless she did something to _make_ him, like cause a scene, though the fact that the image of how fearful she had looked was now burning its way into his retinas, making him wish he could tear his eyes clean out of their sockets, haunted him.

The thought of the sweet petite little redheaded shop clerk at the store being angry with him made his anger jump a little, and he felt the urge to kill pump through his veins, causing him to shove his balled and gloved hands, which were violently shaking, into his coat pocket.

Devin swallowed down hard past the lump that was currently constricting his throat as his deep dark eyes raked over the woman's backside, the beauty with the fiery red hair that looked as though she had been kissed by fire when she was a baby, the hair that smelled of pinewood, and fresh apples in winter.

The thirty-year-old man forced himself to mold his features into something that resembled a perfect impassiveness, a look that he had perfected whenever around his father growing up.

He thought of how the girl had looked at him in the shop, how when Devin met her gaze, all the beauty in the whole world couldn't hope to compete with this one simple concept: _passion_.

Passion turned the young girl's irises into the bright blue fire, cold and warm at the same time. In them, Devin had seen clearly the lady would fight to the last possible tear for her life if it came to that and Devin sincerely hoped that it _didn't_.

She was scared. People got scared of him sometimes. The others, whenever they looked into his eyes and saw nothing there, they had the same look in her eyes that the girl had today as well.

His eyes widened in shock as the realization hit him that he had scared her. Rage once more swelled within and all but consumed him as he followed her, sticking to the shadows and the corners as finally, he ducked behind the building adjacent to her apartment.

Devin stifled a low, almost wolfish growl from the back of his throat, careful to remain hidden by the corner of the building.

The pretty girl hadn't seen him yet, and it would _stay_ that way until the right time to reveal himself and tell her his name.

But for now, he was content to _watch_ , to see which unit she went into. It was important to figure out which one was hers.

He furrowed his dark brown eyebrows together in a quandary as he looked at the worker from the shop.

This girl, whoever she was, really _was_ quite pretty. You'd have to be blind not to see it. Not beautiful in the classic kind of way. Not a bombshell blonde, no flowing golden locks, no piercing eyes of green like the type Dad lusted after.

However, in her ordinariness, something about her was… _beautiful_.

There was no other word for the girl whose fingers had brushed against his. The simple yet too-brief touch still left the pads of his fingertips tingling and numb with electric spasms.

His heart pounded violently against his chest in its cage of bone and cartilage until he thought it might grow wings and fly.

The lady from the hardware store had kind of understated beauty, maybe it was because she was disarmingly aware of her natural prettiness. Her pale skin was flawless, unblemished, at least not that he could see.

Her complexion reminded him of whipped milk, and more than a couple of times during their brief encounter in the front of the store, Devin had to resist the urge to reach up a hand and touch her cheek, wondering if he were to try, to graze the skin of the column of her throat, would he graze only the air? Like the girl was nothing but a ghost.

The woman with the fiery red hair was all about simplicity, he could tell by the way she walked, her posture, the kind of bag she carried, the clothes she wore, making things easier for herself, helping those around her to relax and be happy with what they had.

She wasn't like the _other_ girl that worked in the shop, a pretty blonde girl by the name of Bess, the owner's daughter, but that girl talked way too much and valued expensive materialistic things and lipstick and heels over quality conversation and got on his nerve, but not _this_ one.

Devin had been pleasantly surprised to come in tonight and find the new girl behind the counter instead of Bess, like usual. The girl in the hardware shop tonight had been reserved, quiet, polite, mild-mannered, and quite eager to help him, almost to a fault.

Maybe that was why her almost pallid complexion seemed to glow. It was the inner beauty that caused those bright sky-blue orbs of hers to twinkle and softened her features. He waited, staring across the apartment complex's parking lot as the girl from the shop quickened her pace and peeked over her shoulder as she paused midway up the steps.

He froze, drawing in a sharp breath that pained his lungs as he ducked further behind the building he'd hidden behind, careful to avoid the new girl seeing him.

A little smile came to his lips, despite the evident fear that was plastered on her reddening, windblown face as her ponytail came loose of its holder and flew haphazardly away from her face. If he closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, he liked to imagine the scent of whatever shampoo the girl used that smelled like apples and autumn wafting to his nostrils.

Even with the discomfort wallowing in his broad chest, the tense tightening in his muscles that caused Devin to feel like his whole body was about to seize up, the burning spiraling hot fire-seed of anger welling within his bloodstream, he was overcome with a sense of almost euphoric joy he'd never experienced before.

He almost growled with frustration and the effort to restrain himself as he wracked his brain trying to figure out what it was.

What _was_ it? It was…it was… his own eyes widened as he realized what the emotion was. _Contentment_. His smile widened.

Devin couldn't recall ever feeling the emotion before, not once in his life. This had to be what it felt like as he looked at her.

Devin had been all logic and feigned cold detachment until their fingers had accidentally brushed against each other's, there had been that moment in the shop back there, though he had used up almost all of whatever willpower he possessed within himself not to shoot his arm out and wind his fingers around her slender little wrist, break it, if only to render her immobile, and kiss her knuckles, to bite down with his teeth hard enough to taste blood.

Though that time would eventually come, Devin knew patience was a virtue. The one lesson his dad had taught him growing up that actually stuck with him, though the bastard was long dead, and good riddance.

Devin watched as she walked up the steps towards Apartment 107 and fumbled with her bag for a moment, probably trying to get at her keys to open the front door.

He glanced down at his gloved palm and flexed his fingers into a fist and uncurling it. The burning feeling hadn't subsided.

When he'd touched her hand, or _almost_ had earlier, the pads of his fingertips had barely grazed over her index finger when he'd reached out to take the basket that she had offered him, something foreign and unfamiliar stirred not only within his body, but it completely overtook Devin's entire thought process.

The rest of the world in that stupid hardware shop had become an unimportant blur that was banished into the far corners of the darkest recesses of his mind. The only thing that mattered more was the girl behind the counter who helped him.

The only thing that mattered was finding some excuse to keep the pretty redhead by his side. To touch her more, to bask in the heat and the warmth she gave off just by being _near_ her, then.

The strange pressure that seeped into his chest as warmth had yet to dissipate from his body and Devin decided it could stay. It was one of the strongest feelings he'd ever encountered, but it wasn't altogether unwarranted. He decided that he liked it, that it was a good feeling whatever 'this' happened to be for him.

And he wanted _more_ of it. As much as he could possibly get for himself, really. He was initially skeptical of this feeling at first when he'd been in the store, but he was able to rationalize that whatever he felt around her, this was a good thing.

Something he wanted more of it. But to do that, first, he had to get closer to her. It was as she finally managed to find her keyring as he watched her fumble with the locks on the doors, first the deadbolts, and then the actual look of the doorknob, that he began to have highly inappropriate thoughts of the helpful shop clerk.

He wanted her _that_ way. On her back, on top, anyway that he could keep her and take her. Take her someplace, maybe back to his house, to the cellar where she would be _his_ , no one else's.

As Devin continued having these wildly lustful thoughts of the young redheaded woman, he knew it was the mad beast within his chest and mind threatening to come out if he couldn't calm down.

He lifted his gaze from his brief but pensive staring at his boots, having looked away from the girl for a split second, really needing a moment to compose himself and try to hear his own thoughts against the pounding of the roaring blood in his ears.

And immediately wished he hadn't as an ungodly sight struck his burning retinas until all he saw was white-hot rage.

A dark-haired man, younger than him, but not by all that much, at least from what he could tell from this far off distance, had his arm wound tightly around the girl's shoulder and leaned down and pressed his lips to hers in an affectionate kiss.

Just the sight was enough to send Devin flying into a rage right there on the spot, though somehow, by a miracle of God Himself if the bastard was even listening to him, he managed to stay quiet now.

He'd not thought ahead to this part. That she might be with someone _else_. He gnashed his teeth and balled his violently shaking hands into the pockets of his coat.

A _someone_ that _wasn't him_.

Devin felt his blood begin to heat up as the anger swirled through his veins, igniting his bloodstream to almost a boiling over point.

He was sure at this point his face was red, and it had nothing to do with how pink his cheeks were from the biting cold.

Devin felt his jaw muscles tense up as they locked, grinding his molars together so hard that he swore he heard an audible _clack_! It would have made any normal man immediately fear for their dental health, but then Devin was no ordinary man, was he?

No. No, he _wasn't_. His father, growing up, had made damn well sure of that, then, hadn't he?

His eyes flashed indignantly as they narrowed, locked onto the young woman's form as she was guided into their apartment by the tall, dark-haired man that he _hated_.

This stranger, this new problem that he stared at as their apartment door closed and his keen hearing picked up on the sound of the deadbolt locks sliding back into place, caused him to feel angry. This _bastard_ she was off with did not _deserve_ her at all.

Her large liquid blue eyes held a unique intelligence and a serenity that Devin had felt like it had been impossible for him not to be held prisoner just by looking into her eyes.

He'd been grateful he'd not removed his sunglasses while inside the shop, otherwise, the cute little redhead would have seen how bothered he'd become over the strange effect she seemed to have on him, and the girl didn't even know it for herself. But she would soon.

Which would explain away his earlier momentary lapse in judgment and inability to form a structured sentence, much less even utter a single syllable around the girl that had him ensnared.

Her cheekbones weren't especially high, and her nose was a little too long to be perfect, but it was still slender and cute in his mind, but there was an undeniable symmetry to the new girl's delicate features, like that of a pretty red rose, just waiting to bloom.

Maybe that was what had him so captivated about the girl.

Her smooth dry skin, despite the current harshness of the ferocious blizzard, was dotted with a light smattering of freckles around the bridge of her nose.

Her thin eyebrows curved in swooping arcs over those bewitching blue eyes of hers. Her small button nose complemented her wide forehead and her blunt chin.

These features wouldn't necessarily turn heads if she walked down the street or cause anyone to really look twice at her.

No, all of those physical attributes about the girl behind the counter were normal. He'd seen them on lots of women in his life.

No. It was this beauty's blue eyes that were the true prize. What secrets would he uncover, as he looked deep into their depths? He couldn't wait to find out.

His long pale fingers closed into shaking fists as he pounded on the sides of his head in agitation, hitting against his dark brown hair, so dark it was almost black.

Her face was everywhere, it was all Devin could really see.

Her oblong face was permanently implanted into his mind and Devin didn't think he could get it out even if he tried.

Not that he _wanted_ to, but still. Every time he closed his eyes, her nervous, shy little smile shone brightly against his lids.

There was a large part of Devin that thought he'd like nothing more than to carve it right off the pretty redhead's face because of the simple fact that her smile wasn't directed at _him_.

When he opened his eyes, his breaths coming to him in short, ragged little gasps as he panted for air that simply wasn't coming to his lungs, all he could see was the girl's blue irises, calling to him like one of those sirens from the sea like the stories, with just a single look.

Except they were looking at that _bastard_.

It made him want to gouge out her retinas. He couldn't explain away why it infuriated him so bad that the pretty girl behind the counter was seeming like she was with another man, dating him.

Whoever the bastard was, he couldn't handle a girl like her, and it infuriated Devin that he'd not thought of all of this sooner. He should have figured she would have had someone.

The ship had long since sailed for the young banker to see reason.

All he could see now was the cute little shop clerk and the feelings that she brought out of him that he both welcomed and reviled. The _aggravation_ … _arousal_ , _admiration_ , you name it, she invoked _all_ of these foreign feelings.

What did that asshole of a boyfriend have that _he_ didn't? _He_ could be poised, well-dressed enough. _He_ was educated, intelligent, way more than that college kid inside ever could be.

_He_ was independently wealthy enough. Devin couldn't take it. He was not going to stand out in the freezing cold temperatures while the pretty little young woman entrapped in his black, putrid heart slipped from his fingertips, like trying to catch the wind.

But he would try. That redhead was going to be his and his alone.

He gnashed his teeth together and caught sight of his reflection in a puddle by his feet as he strode forward and blanched, looking caught off guard at the guy he saw in his reflection, distorted by the ripples of the water his boot made.

The shadow of the monster flitted across his average, but still good-looking face. He felt his stomach give a painful lurch, and Devin thought he might just vomit.

There was the smallest fraction of Devin's mind that knew what he was and hated it.

_Disgust_. Just the word made his jaw lock in anger and his skin crawl as he thought of himself, how he wished his circumstances were different, but it was too late for him. Yes, that's what he felt for himself. Total disgust at what he really was, what he represented.

A clumsy and insecure mess around women, particularly _pretty_ women, especially _her_. Devin felt his shoulders slump and his eyes cast downward in a slightly mournful gaze, his mostly-handsome face held a forlorn worn expression as he continued his pensive staring at the now-closed apartment door of 107, wondering what the pretty girl and bastard were up to now.

_Probably nothing good_ , he thought bitterly to himself. His mouth was set in a semi-pout as he remained rooted to the spot in the freezing cold blizzard that waged war on the elements outside.

Devin licked his teeth as he closed his eyes wanting to satiate himself at the image of the pretty red-haired girl behind the counter.

Seeing her up close and personal as he had earlier only reinforced the notion of truth in the thirty-year-old man's mind that she was quite the beautiful young woman. A perfect match.

The girl he'd encountered today really _was_ quite pretty. And _kind_ , too. Pretty blue eyes trimmed by long gorgeous lashes that fluttered downward whenever she was nervous around him.

Her eyes held warmth inside of those deep pools of crystalline sapphire blue, of which Devin knew he selfishly wanted for himself.

If it was possible to bottle up that girl's warmth and hoard it within a little glass vial that he could keep in his pocket, then he would do it. Florid cheeks and flawless pink, luscious lips, just ripe for kissing and biting until he could taste the girl's blood.

Earlier when he'd been standing in the aisles of the shop, and the girl standing close enough to him at one point to hand over the basket she'd managed to grab for him, their shoulders had almost touched, and at such intimate, close proximity, he could see the girl's lips clearly, glistening attractively with a clear coating of lip gloss that added a further sheen to her healthy lips.

Devin imagined biting down on her mouth until he drew blood and then sucking it from the wound, tasting the coppery tang of its sweetness on his own tongue. Such a euphoric bliss.

All of these features sat together on that girl's delicate, almost angelic face. And she was going to be his, and tonight.

He didn't think he could wait any longer. But there was so much to do. So much to _do_. And first things first, how to take them, because he couldn't very well take the girl and leave _him_.

The dark-haired bastard was sure to call the cops, send people—family, friends, random Samaritans on a search party—to look for her once it became apparent that the girl was missing.

His blood boiled at the thought of having to take them both. Just looking at the handsome dark-haired bastard made him want to puke.

A chill ran through his spine as he heard a horrible, agonized yell, more of a roar of anger and unbridled fury. It made him shudder just like the freezing cold kept him awake.

His blood turned to ice in his veins and a bead of sweat dripped down his face that he shakily reached up with his gloved hand to wipe it away, growing increasingly frustrated with this.

He sat there, wracking his brain for how to take the girl.

It took him a moment to realize the scream came from _him_.

Devin could think of very little else but the pulsing of his own throbbing blood in his eardrums as it pounded relentlessly, the sound almost deafening, leaving his ears with a loud ringing.

He understood what it was that he needed to do now. And he had to get to work immediately if his plan was going to work.

Because…because he wanted so badly to _play_ with her.

Though before he could so much as take one step forward in the snow to trudge a path to make his way across the parking lot and stalk right up those steps and knock on her apartment door with the intent of introducing himself and getting to know the girl, the man in his thirties suddenly look on a pale look as if he'd been painted with white-wash.

Even his lips were barely there and tinged slightly blue from the cold.

Then before he could so much as take a half-step backward, Devin crumpled like a puppet suddenly released of their strings. He knew he would faint whenever his stomach gave out.

It felt like his innards were being replaced by some kind of black hole.

Then nausea crept from his abdomen to his head, bile lingering in his throat and the entire world went black, though not before he heard a startled high-pitched yelp that almost caused him to open his eyes in alarm.

He could swear he heard _her_ voice, talking to him, telling him to hang on, that he was going to be okay, she would help him.

Devin's skin went ashen and he stumbled forward before he fell, face-first into a pile of freshly fallen snow, while unbeknownst to him, Frank Hardy and Nancy Drew grabbed at the man's arms as he stumbled, having been alerted to the commotion outside of their apartment, having heard the scream and both had come outside to investigate the disturbance, to see if anyone was in trouble, and if they _were_ , what they could possibly do to help the poor soul.

Then he lay there on the ground, as still as a corpse, barely breathing at all as his heartbeat slowed in his chest from so much exposure to the bitter cold and having stood outside their apartment for God only knew how long he'd been out here before Frank and Nancy worked together to try their hardest to lift the man and take him inside their apartment.


	3. Chapter 3

**3**

**FRANK** grunted and gritted his teeth with the effort to drag the unconscious older man back inside of Nancy's apartment, hauling his limp, broad form towards the couch where, just a second ago, they'd been cozied up for their weekly Friday horror movie night, about to watch _The Thing_ , and now it looked like their date was on hold.

While admittedly a little bit resentful of this fact, he forced himself to shove aside all thoughts of growing annoyance that their movie night had gotten interrupted and refocused his attention towards making sure the guy who'd fainted was secure.

Swallowing down hard past a lump in his throat, he shoved aside a couple of the spare pillows on Nancy's sofa to make room to lay him out on the sofa, hoping that a softer surface would help the stranger.

It looked as though he'd fallen and hit his head pretty hard. He sincerely hoped the man didn't have a concussion. He doubted an ambulance could reach their complex in this blizzard.

The twenty-two-year-old panted for a moment to catch his breath. The guy was _definitely_ heavier and stronger than he looked and looked towards Nancy for confirmation to see if his girlfriend was thinking the same thing that he was.

She shot him a look in return without her having to say a word that Nancy was. He was going to have to stay here for the night to ride out the worst of the raging blizzard raging war on the elements outside her flat.

They couldn't well call for an ambulance or even Carson Drew's next-door neighbor who happened to be a well-known doctor to come out and take a look at him. Not in this kind of inclement weather.

They wouldn't even make it past the driveways of their respective homes or the EMS station before the snow would entrap them, to say nothing of the sleek black ice on the roads.

Nancy slowly nodded with an incline of her head and shot Frank an apologetic little smile and a shrug of her shoulders.

"He can sleep here on the sofa. We can stay on the floor," she said, though she was more than a little surprised when Frank raised one of his hands and cut her off. She blinked, surprised at this.

"Uh-huh. I don't think so, Nan. _You_ will be sleeping in your _bed_ , Nancy Drew, _I_ will be sleeping out here on the floor with this guy just in case something happens to him during the night, Nancy," he lightly admonished and felt his irises darken in color and he could tell by the audible little gasp of surprise Nancy gave off that his girlfriend had seen it.

He jerked his thumb towards the unconscious man now lying seemingly motionless on top of Nancy's hand-me-down sofa from Carson that her father had let her take when she moved out of her father's home and into her new apartment.

"It's what's safest for you, Nance, and you _know_ it. We don't know a thing about this guy, other than he's hurt. Not really..." Only when his girlfriend reluctantly nodded her agreement, though she didn't look too happy about it, did Frank look away.

Frank Hardy's natural curiosity getting the better of him, he bent over the man's face for a better look at what he and Nancy were dealing with here. He was an average-looking guy, thirties, early thirties if he had to pinpoint a guess as to the man's age.

Taller than Frank, and a bit lankier, looking admittedly physically weaker than Frank, especially given the nature of his current condition, since they'd found him passed out and face first in a pile of snow outside, which Nancy thought his weakened state for right now was considered a good thing if it turned out this man woke up and became hostile towards either one of them upon noticing he was now in unfamiliar surroundings and near people who were strangers to him, as he was to them.

Frank gave his head a curt shake to clear his mind and forced himself into action. He couldn't just stand there gaping at him, not when he was probably suffering from hypothermia. He knelt into a slight crouch and rested his hand on the guy's arm.

Ice-cold to the touch. He flinched and drew his hand back, though something about this stranger gave Frank pause, though he couldn't quite put his finger on it. He reached out again, his arm a bit unsteady and shaking slightly as he held them to his lips.

His lips were tinged slightly blue, but he felt the air leave the man's thin lips. It was faint but it was definitely there. Still alive.

"Nancy!" he shouted over his shoulder, wondering where his girlfriend had gotten off to. His girlfriend appeared instantly, having darted towards her bedroom to grab a couple of blankets.

"I'm here, Frank!" Nancy squeaked in a breathless sounding voice, poking her head out from behind the corner of the hallway that led down into Nancy's bedroom. He could hear her rummaging through the closet that was just outside of the bathroom where she kept her spare towels and bathroom toiletries.

Nancy bolted forward on the bounds of her bare heels and set to work pilling blanket after blanket on him, doing what she could to get his blood flowing again. She cringed. She could tell Frank wasn't especially pleased with having a stranger in her apartment, though what little choice did they have right now? In this blizzard, it would take ages before an ambulance would get here, and she didn't even know if this guy lived in this complex or not, or maybe he'd been visiting a friend or family member or something.

And more to the point besides, this man, whoever he was, probably would have frozen to death if they'd not heard the startled cry come from outside and went out to see what was going on.

She knew she couldn't just let the man _freeze_ outside. Nancy didn't think she could live with herself if she let that happen. No. She and Frank would do what they could for him, and hopefully, when he woke up and was well enough, would tell them who he was and what on earth he was doing out in this bad storm.

Frank gingerly rested a strong, slightly calloused palm on the man's forehead and flinched. Now that they'd gotten the guy inside, he seemed to be regaining a little bit of color, though his skin was hot to the touch, or at least the man's forehead was.

Somehow, someway, the stranger on their sofa was running a fever.

"Nance, he's burning up!" he said frantically. "I think he's sick." He rose to his feet and headed for the little kitchen nook, rummaging through the cabinets. "Do you keep any aspirin? We need to find something to try to bring his fever down, and _fast_ , Nancy!" he asked, sifting through cans of canned vegetables and various microwavable soup and macaroni cups.

When his girlfriend did not immediately answer his question, Frank felt a vent of adrenaline surge through his veins as he started to panic. " _Nancy_?!" Frank called again, more desperate this time.

Nancy flushed, unaware she'd been caught staring at the stranger, perching herself at the edge of the sofa, drawn to his face. She reluctantly tore her gaze away from the unconscious man's face and looked towards Frank, whose facial muscles had hardened, a muscle in his jaw and behind his brown eyes spasming while he waited for her to tell her where the pills were.

"Top shelf, in the back in the Tupperware container," she told him and returned her attention to the stranger, removing his cap and finding a surprisingly thick tuft of dark brown luscious-looking hair.

It looked like he took relatively decent care of himself, from what little Nancy could see as her eyes made a quick scan of him as she continued to pile blanket after blanket on him.

Tall, looming, and in Nancy's mind, kind of aggressive. This caused the same prickling nagging feeling at the back of her mind to take over as she realized it was the same sensation she'd gotten when forced to interact with the customer in Bess's dad's shop not even thirty minutes ago.

The blood drained from her face as she hoped this man and that one wasn't one and the same, though considering he'd not taken his sunglasses off, it had been almost impossible and difficult for her to make out any details of the man's face.

She liked to be able to see a person's eyes, to read what they were thinking and feeling, and the fact that the stranger from the shop had denied of her made her feel rather uneasy.

Nancy craned her neck from her perch at the edge of her sofa, not wanting to get too close to this man for reasons she couldn't quite explain other than the fact that he was, well, a _stranger_ , to her, and Nancy growing up was always wary of them.

There was nothing all that remarkable about him. Tall, well-built. Slender but muscular, kind of broad in the shoulders and his chest. His hair, now that she'd gotten his black knit hat off, was a dull dark brown color, almost darker than Frank's, almost black, and his face was normal enough.

If she wasn't so concerned about bringing his fever down and making sure he woke up, Nancy might even go as far enough as to say the guy they'd rescued tonight was handsome. His face was strong and angular. Thick eyebrows, almost a Roman face. Good-looking, but not male model worthy.

Nancy scooted aside, half rising from her perch on the edge of the sofa as she heard Frank nudge beside her, fumbling to open the packet of aspirin he'd managed to find, swearing under his breath as he finally managed to pop the sealant but almost dropped the pill, but he managed to catch it with quick reflexes.

"Here, Nan, tilt his head back some and open his mouth. This ought to bring his fever down. I _hope_ ," Frank murmured.

Nancy did as her boyfriend asked and gingerly cupped the man's chin in her shaking palm and tilted his head back, forcing his lips open so Frank could force the aspirin down his throat.

As she did so, the slight jostling movement of his head against the pillow caused the stranger's eyelids to flicker open, and Nancy bit down on the wall of her mouth to stifle her startled cry of surprise and awe, not having expected the sudden motion.

A brilliant pair of rich dark brown irises stared back at her for a moment as the man's lashes blinked owlishly in confusion as he half-rose his head off the pillow, a low, guttural groan escaping his lips, still tinged slightly blue, though it quickly became apparent he was lacking the strength to hold his head upright as he collapsed his head back against the pillow with an ungraceful flop. His eyes were so rich, so dark they could almost be mistaken for black, Nancy thought, feeling her own eyes widen in shock.

She and Frank watched in awe as his eyes swiveled around for what felt like several moments in confusion before focusing on resting on Nancy's stricken face.

The man, whoever he was, parted his lips open slightly to speak, though couldn't manage to utter so much as a single syllable, as he stared at her silently, Nancy felt an inexplicable pressure begin to well her chest. It took her a moment to realize that the emotion was an overpowering sympathy.

His eyes were a deep, rich umber brown, and filled with horrible grief, pain, and betrayal, the likes of which she couldn't even begin to manage to comprehend, but she _wanted_ to. She wanted to understand.

_Who are you_? She wondered silently to herself as she found herself suddenly moved with pity and rested a hand on his shoulder. "You're going to be all right," she whispered in the dimly lit living room of their apartment. "It's gonna be all right, sir."

Slowly but surely, his eyelids fluttered closed, and though Nancy didn't speak the thought to him, she _felt_ it.

_You'll be fine_. _We're going to look after you_.

Nancy felt herself beginning to grow quite flustered, not even aware she'd breathed a sigh of relief as she heard his breathing begin to regulate, the slow and steady rise and fall of his chest the only indicator he was alive.

She jumped, flinching slightly as she felt Frank's hand come to rest on her right shoulder, giving it a light but firm squeeze.

"I think he's going to be okay," Frank murmured, careful to keep his voice low. "I guess he passed out. He'll probably be asleep for a while, he was looking pretty exhausted there for a few seconds, Nance. I think we'd be okay to get back to our movie if you want. We'll keep the volume low," he offered, casting a somewhat nervous glance towards the dark-haired sleeping man on the sofa. "If he's hungry when he wakes up, we can offer him a couple of slices of the pizza," he remarked kindly, his gaze flitting towards the pizza box propped idly on the edge of the countertop near the kitchen, almost at the exact same moment she heard his stomach rumble.

Nancy let out a light little chuckle and shook her head to herself as she playfully swatted her boyfriend on the arm, though as Frank moved from his spot on the sofa on the far left to get their plates of food and re-settle back in to watch _The Thing_ , her attention was drawn back towards the stranger on the sofa.

His coat looked expensive, at least from what Nancy could tell of the label and material that it was made out of, which suggested to Nancy that the man in his thirties came from money, which Frank had peeled off of him so his coat could dry by the living room gas fireplace that Frank flicked the switch to turn it on so his coat and boots would be warm for him by the time he woke up and left Nancy's apartment, revealing he was wearing a black woolen turtleneck sweater and jeans underneath his heavy winter coat.

She found herself inexplicably thinking about the stranger's eyes. Such a rich, deep brown, not even Frank's brown eyes were that dark. She could not seem to get the memory now implanted in her brain out of her head at all.

She thought again about rummaging through the pockets of his jacket to see if he had a wallet or any kind of ID on him, any clue that might tell her and Frank who this stranger now sleeping on her sofa and fighting a fever was, but in the end, decided against it.

Though this older man was definitely a stranger in her apartment, he'd not given her and Frank any just cause to distrust him (yet!) and she decided that she could not be so paranoid and distrusting. Nancy was confident this man meant them no harm.

He was just going to have to tell them his name the old-fashioned way when he woke up and had gotten his strength back.

Nancy shook her head to herself and let out a content little sigh as she scooted over on the far side of the sofa to make room for Frank as he nestled in close to his girlfriend, silently passing his girlfriend her plate of pizza, though she felt she could only pick at her slices, nibbling on them occasionally, her concentration and focus not on the movie at all, but instead on this he-stranger next to them.

How his eyes were almost… _black_ in a way. So…so _dark_. But she wouldn't go as far as to say that they were void, no.

The brief glimpse Nancy had gotten of the stranger's eyes, she could see that there was definitely thought going on behind those dark irises of his as he'd managed to lock gazes with her just then.

She shook her head to herself and tried to force her thoughts away from the new guy now sleeping on her sofa, trying hard to concentrate on salvaging her weekly Friday date night with Frank, despite the unexpected turn of events this cold winter night had taken.

Despite her best efforts and telling herself not to think about him anymore, Nancy barely made it a half-hour into their movie, right when they were getting to the part when the group in the Norwegian research station discovered the remains of the Thing's spaceship before she once again started mulling over how his eyes had looked, his facial expression.

What was the man thinking, when he'd looked at her. If anything at all. Nancy let out a sigh as she nibbled at her piece of meat lovers' pizza, the sharp zest of the bite of pepperoni lingered on her tongue.

It was a little bit spicier than she anticipated and she turned her head to the side to cough as her lungs heaved for air and her hands made a mad grope for her glass of ice water on the side table by the sofa.

Unfortunately, the noise did not go unnoticed by their unexpected guest, who stirred slightly in his sleep, mouth slightly agape as he turned his head and his eyelids slowly fluttered open.

Nancy froze, immediately setting down her water glass after taking a sip trying to rid her tongue of the spiciness of that bite of pepperoni while Frank grabbed the remote to pause the movie.

Until she'd ruined the guy's sleep and just had to cough, he'd not appeared to have budged an inch since Frank had more or less set him down by himself onto her sofa in the living room.

She flinched as the man's lids blinked once or twice as he fought to lift his head off the pillow. She bit down on her bottom lip. He was admittedly, in the moment at least, not a pretty sight.

The young man was still way too pale to be considered naturally healthy, almost bone-white, though she sincerely hoped if the man spent some time in front of their fireplace he'd warm up quick enough.

A little bit of color had returned to the man's still-pallid and now kind of clammy complexion and his lips were no longer tinged blue, so that was better than nothing, Nancy supposed.

Even in his weakened state, the stranger gave off the impression of powerful physical strength, at least to Nancy. A quick glance at Frank out of the corner of her gaze was more than enough, that he didn't think this man was going to be a problem.

She swallowed down hard. She sincerely _hoped_ not.

As the stranger blinked and slowly took in his surroundings, Nancy couldn't help but pity the guy, whoever he was.

She had so many burning questions running through her mind and at the tip of her tongue, all waiting to be asked, but the last thing she wanted was to accost the man with questions as to what he was doing outside for such an extended length of time, why he'd passed out, if he was in trouble and needed a ride home, but she knew in his weakened state, that was the last thing he needed.

Nancy knew her questions were just going to have to wait. She wondered what unimaginable hell the man had been through in his life to cause such a horrible torment in those piercing dark brown eyes of his that looked like pits of darkness?

Why was he out in the snow? Was he in trouble? Was he new to River Heights? How come she had never seen him before? So many questions and not a single answer. Nancy felt the frustration at how her day had gone so far begin to bubble within her chest.

Nancy didn't know every single soul in their little Midwestern town in Illinois, but she knew a good many people, thanks to her father's status as a prominent lawyer and her love of a good mystery now and again, but she didn't recognize this man, which brought her to the one question that she wanted an answer to the most, more than any of the others.

_Who are you_? Nancy silently asked the stranger, hoping to communicate with the guy in impossible telepathy as the man slowly opened his eyes even wider and his gaze settled on her.

She molded her lips into what she hoped was a soft, reassuring smile and sat up straighter, turning at the waist to better look this man in the eyes, hoping she came off as kind.

It was time to find out who he was.

* * *

Devin had thought death should have been way less painful, and out of all the ways to go out, passing out in the midst of a freakishly bad Midwestern blizzard was not how he'd have chosen it.

But then again, he was certain he was far away from any sweet, glorious Heaven. It seemed like he was caught in a churning tide.

All at once, he became aware of the searing pain, a horrible numbness that engulfed his still-frozen body. It was almost more than the thirty-year-old could bear as he gritted his teeth together.

However, his aching bones refused to move and kept him pinned in place on top of an unusually soft surface that didn't quite feel like the snow-packed, icy concrete he had fallen on top of.

He wallowed in the misery of the darkness behind his closed eyelids, alone in his eternal darkness, and longed for the redhead.

Devin wanted nothing more than to float here, alone, with the young woman from the hardware store, savoring every second. But it didn't stop. He continued to surface from the hazy darkness of his own mind, moving upward, his whole body numb.

Suddenly, from nowhere a light burned itself into his vision. It was bright, almost like someone was shining one of those pen flashlights into his eyes, trying to peer into his pupils.

It was agonizing and very nearly blinded the poor young banker. The force of the light shining into his eyes snapped his eyes open. The darkness was gone. He was staring up into the eyes of the prettiest young woman that Devin had ever seen in his life.

It took his hazy, clouded mind a fraction of a second to realize that it was _her_.

The girl from the store! She'd… _saved_ him. He stared up into those piercing eyes of blue and she quickly lowered the flashlight pen that she held in her left hand.

She was a southpaw. He wanted to laugh at that but lacked the strength to do so. His chest heaved as his heart struggled to find its rhythm again as he surfaced from the murkiness of his torpid whirl of dark thoughts as he slowly came back to reality.

Devin tested his body, his muscles flexing through his limbs, and digits of his hands and feet wouldn't move when he tried to. Every attempt sent searing explosions of pain through him. His hoarse throat cried out and felt scratchy as he tried to speak.

"That's it," the young redhead's quiet, shy, and reserved voice came through the gloom of his own mind again. "Try to stay calm and stay awake."

Even at a quick glance as his vision slowly but surely adjusted and he sat upright, he realized that she must have somehow heard him outside, which meant he'd drawn attention to himself.

He gnashed his teeth together in self-hatred at his own stupidity for causing unwanted attention like this, and now he was in her apartment before he was ready and Devin did not _like_ it.

The living room he found himself in gave away perhaps more about this young woman's personality than she meant it to. Over the mantle of her fireplace, just below the TV that was hung on the wall was pictures of a woman that looked like her.

_Her mother_ , he thought. Deceased most likely, considering the careful placement of tiny white lily flower petals, fake ones, around the frames, meant to honor the woman in the photograph.

Every decoration in this apartment was practical but held a slight feminine touch. The living room was small, pretty, and elegant.

_Just like her_ , Devin thought. A pretty room for a pretty lady. Three of the four walls were covered by a trio of bookshelves carved from a rich mahogany wood crammed full of old books.

Near the windowsill was a vase containing a light bouquet of evergreen holly. No doubt she'd put it there to give her small apartment a festive holiday cheer as Christmas was in another week or so.

He tore his gaze away from the wall behind the pretty redhead and returned his attention back towards her, only to find that the dark-haired bastard was now standing alongside the girl.

At this, he gave a sudden start. A lifetime of experience around men like his father had taught him to be wary of other guys. He felt his hands start to tremble with rage and rancor.

He wanted to kill this bastard, whoever he was. Again, and again and again.

He wanted nothing more than to bash his skull to the floor, wanting to hear every bone in this guy's body crack as he broke them one-by-one, wanting to watch the clean wood of the girl's hardwood floor of her living room stain crimson with his blood, that sweet precious lifeforce, and watch the light leave his eyes. But he swallowed down hard and looked back towards her.

Now would _definitely_ be a good time to leave. Devin made a noncommittal grunting noise out of the back of his throat as he tried to heave himself from the sofa he was resting on top of and discovered much to his anger and annoyance, he was still too bloody weak to move a damn muscle. His limbs were still cold.

Just the futile effort of trying to lift his head off the damned pillow was proving way too great a task and he let out a low growl.

"Easy, buddy, just take it easy and try to _relax_. You must have been outside in the storm a good long while. My girlfriend and I found you passed out outside," the guy spoke up in a slightly husky voice that made Devin's blood ignite in his veins.

Well, that was _one_ way to warm himself up, he thought bitterly to himself. He stared and thought carefully as he looked at the dark-haired boyfriend and bastard of the pretty girl from the shop.

Devin gritted his teeth, angry with himself at feeling so incredibly weak, as he realized that he was just going to have to wait. That Dad had always been fond of telling himself patience was a virtue, and even if it had been his intention to take the girl tonight, in his weakened physical state, there was no way it was happening. Not _tonight_ , at least.

The decision proved to be entirely too much, and he ducked his head, gnashing his teeth. His dark, heavily-lidded eyes raised from the floor as he was quick to mold the features of his face into a look of impassive indifference as he looked at the pretty lady's boyfriend.

Only one thing was circulating through his mind: hurting this man.

This bad man in front of him was _ruining_ his plans! His hoarse throat wanted nothing more than to scream at the top of his lungs, but his body fought against the urge.

He did not want to startle the girl. Still keeping his jaw locked in anger, he swallowed down hard past the lump in his throat and was grateful to tear his gaze away from the man when he heard a noise. Repressing a fatigued sigh, Devin lay back against the pillow helplessly as the pretty young redhead perched herself dangerously close to him on the edge of her sofa.

"How are you feeling?" she asked, and Devin almost blinked at her, startled upon hearing the genuine concern laced throughout her sweet, almost shy-sounding tones.

It almost made him laugh. What an _odd_ question. No one, save for this girl, had ever asked after his health before.

More often than naught, it was the contrary, where the few people that did exist in his life expressed a desire that he go drown or hang himself, the most recent one having been his father, and he'd killed his old man. Slit his throat and stuffed his body in an old wine barrel in the cellar before he'd disposed of it after he'd reported his admittedly something of a recluse, his father the retired CEO of a chain of banks, missing.

Devin opened his mouth to speak to the young woman, though he couldn't as his throat was parched and there was a lump in his throat that was constricting his passageways, making it difficult for him to manage any other noise save for a wheeze.

The redhead was quick to notice Devin's growing discomfort and looked around to the left and right before she spotted what she was looking for: a glass of ice water on a table.

Devin felt his body instinctively seize up as she gingerly scooted towards him, but instead of hitting him or hurting him, she merely put one of her arms behind his shoulders and with the help of her boyfriend succeeded in raising him to sit up better.

"Don't drink it all at once. Just go slow," the guy cautioned, his cautious, guarded tone coming from Devin's left that instantly ignited the man's blood in his veins.

Devin's body tingled in rage anytime this younger man opened his mouth.

His muscles clenched and the blood flow to his face increased as he shifted uncomfortably the moment the girl tore the rim of the glass away from his lips once she thought he'd had enough water to drink.

His knuckles were white-boned and shook as he clutched on the edges of the sofa for support as he sat further upright to a full sitting position and met the strangers' quizzical but cautious gazes.

Somehow, he managed to gasp out in a hoarse whisper.

"Where…?" His voice trailed off, still too weak to string together a complete sentence. He rested his head back against one of the cushions as sleep was quickly taking hold of him, but before it could claim him completely for another couple of hours, he forced himself to speak one more time. "Your…name…?" He flinched at how hoarse, rough, and grating his voice sounded, like sandpaper, as though he had not used it for several years, not having the need to speak, and in a way, Devin guessed he hadn't.

The slightest movement of his dark eyes caught the pretty girl's attention, and he could see without directly looking at her that she was nervous biting the inside wall of her cheek in fear.

She hesitated, but only for a fraction of a second as she met the dark-haired man's gaze and the tempered strength of his hand on her shoulder seemed to give her courage enough to answer.

"Nancy. My name is Nancy Drew. You can call me Nancy or Nance if you want, I answer to whatever, really. This is Frank, Frank Hardy, my boyfriend. You're in my apartment after we found you outside passed out and close to dying, sir," she added, glancing sideways at her boyfriend to gauge his reaction. "We're glad you're going to be okay." She looked away from him and out towards the window at the storm raging on. "Looks like this blizzard won't be letting up anytime soon, sadly, but if you're okay with it for tonight, you can sleep on my couch for the night. It won't be super comfortable, but it's better than freezing to death."

She smiled at him, but he continued to stare blankly at her.

Devin could hear her reply faintly, but the pretty girl's voice whose name he now knew to be Nancy, her tone sounded faint, muffled, as if far away or as if she were speaking from underwater.

His eyelids fluttered closed and he felt himself start to smile, the edges of his thin lips curling upwards as he drifted off.

_Thank you_ , is what he meant to say and wanted to, but lacked the strength. Instead, Devin's black, putrid heart answered for him, his lips no longer taking directions from his own mind.

"Pretty Nancy," he whispered, and as he kept his eyes closed, he did not bear witness to the look of abject shock on Nancy Drew's face, or the look of stunned surprise on Frank's.

He drifted off into a surprisingly peaceful sleep, despite the fact that rage still coursed through his bloodstream at the thought of this _bastard_ off with Nancy who he thought he didn't _deserve_.

Devin could think of little else but the pulsing of his boiling blood through his veins. Feeling Nancy so close to him and unable to take her, not with how he felt in his current, weakened state.

He wanted more, but he knew he would have to be patient.

Devin barely registered the sounds as his body succumbed to sleep of Frank Hardy rolling out a sleeping bag next to the sofa so he could keep watch on the stranger on Nancy's sofa for the night. Devin's mind was stuck on one thing and only thing only.

Taking Nancy at the right time, and when he did…she would be _his_. His and his _alone_ , and God help if another man so much as looked at her.

If they did...he would kill them.


	4. Chapter 4

**4**

**NANCY** looked curiously at the man's sleeping figure before turning her attention towards Frank, sitting against the sofa on the floor and now watching another movie before going to bed.

Something within her harbored a twinge of caution towards the idea of Frank sleeping out here on the floor beside him while she was to stay in the relative safety of her bedroom.

She knew she was merely being cautious, but it didn't stop the nineteen-year-old from feeling somewhat guilty about it. So far, this man had given her no real reason to mistrust him.

The guy whose name they _still_ didn't know (and this frustrated her to no end) had passed out again before she could ask him his name. Nancy furrowed her brows in a frown as she tore her gaze away from the sleeping stranger on her sofa and tilted her chin to look at Frank before slowly sliding to the floor to sit next to him.

"You _sure_ you'll be okay?" she asked, stifling a huge yawn with the back of her hand, glancing at the clock on the mantle.

It was almost midnight.

She blinked, startled at how late it was. No wonder she was so tired. Though before she could ask a follow-up question, Frank's smooth, rich voice cut through her thoughts and interrupted whatever she'd been about to say.

"Yup. Don't worry about me, Nan, I can take care of myself." He chuckled and reached up to swipe a lock of her red hair off her shoulders upon seeing Nancy shot him a doubtful stare. "You should go to sleep, baby, don't you have your dress appointment in the morning to pick it up? You won't want to miss it by oversleeping. We'll need to leave afterward if we want to get there on time. We can get breakfast along the way, babe," he murmured, leaning forward, and pressing his lips to her temple before moving to her lips.

Nancy didn't look entirely convinced. "Are you sure?" she asked, doubt seeping into her voice.

He chuckled as he noticed her worried frown. "Don't worry. I will be just _fine_. I'm right here if the guy wakes up and needs anything. Besides, we've got George's cousin's wedding to go to tomorrow, remember? Assuming the storm lets up by then." He shot her a look and raised his dark brows at her.

_Damn_. Nancy's eyes widened as she thumped her palm to her forehead and dragged it alongside the side of her face in exasperation. She'd almost _forgotten._

Nancy was supposed to pick up her bridesmaid's dress from the seamstress in the morning, and the slight smirk on her boyfriend's face as Nancy shot Frank a furtive, guilty look told him that he'd already known that she had accidentally let it slip her mind, like most other things that had happened to her this week since it was their first week off from school.

George's cousin was getting married at a mountain resort about a half-hour's drive from here, assuming the snowplows would have the roads cleared and salted by then. She, Bess, and George were bridesmaids at the wedding and Frank was her plus one.

She nervously twisted the little gold promise ring Frank had given her a couple of months ago but was pulled from her feelings of guilt when she heard Frank let out an odd little snort through his nose.

"I'm going to guess judging by the look of shock on your face, Nan, that you _did_ forget," he joked, shooting her a playful grin. "But that's what I'm here for, babe, to remind you of these things," Frank chuckled, shaking his head in jest more to himself than to Nancy at this moment, for which Nancy was grateful for it.

Nancy slowly nodded, peeking back over her shoulder towards the stranger, wishing that she knew this man's name for herself. Her eyebrows knitted together in a worried little frown.

Frank noticed where she was looking and his narrowed gaze followed hers, though something in his dark brown eyes softened as he tore his gaze away from the sleeping stranger on his girlfriend's couch and forced his attention back towards Nancy.

"You all right, Nan?" he murmured, unable to keep the note of concern out of his voice, pulling his girlfriend closer and gingerly rubbing her shoulder, pressing his lips to hers in a brief but affectionate kiss, and decided he didn't like the resistance that she gave off as Nancy could barely bring her lips to meet Frank's.

As he pulled apart, worry wormed its way into the pit of his churning stomach, not liking the sudden pallid complexion her face had taken as she bit down on her bottom lip in concern.

Frank felt his heart pound relentlessly against its cage of bone and cartilage, his stomach tightening into vicious coils, making him feel slightly sick. His girlfriend was looking bothered.

In all the years that he had known Nancy Drew, prior even to Ned dumping her for another girl after the strain of their relationship had finally taken its toll, Nance had never once hesitated to tell him anything that was on her mind. Not once.

Nancy never felt as though she'd had to hide anything from Frank, and to a lesser extent, his younger brother Joe, or Bess and George, but why was she now looking like she _too_ was going to faint? The sofa wasn't big enough for this stranger _and_ Nancy.

"Nan?" Frank spoke slowly and quietly, careful to choose his words so as to hope that he wasn't coming across as demanding or hurt, though he very much felt hurt right now.

She was effectively _keeping_ something from him, something that was on her mind and was bothering her, Frank could read his girlfriend like an open book, every emotion in her bright blue eyes, those windows to her soul. And right now, her soul was troubled.

"What's wrong, babe?" Frank tried again. "Has something happened? Are you feeling sick?" he paused, feeling so uncertain of himself for the first time in their relationship. "Nan?"

He looked at Nancy's paling face in worry and concern, because for perhaps the first time since knowing her in his life, Nancy turned her gaze away from him. He flinched away in both antagonized hurt and surprise.

This was…not a good sign at all.

Nancy grew still at Frank's words. She shook her head dejectedly as her shoulders slumped forward in a sense of defeat.

Immediately sensing his girlfriend's distress, Frank started to grow even more worried.

"Nan, will you _please_ tell me what's the _matter_?" Frank asked, concerned, refusing to let go of her hand, which was resting on top of his right thigh, her fingernails practically digging into the thick material of his flannel pajama pants.

Nancy looked away from Frank, hot shame marring her face and pinking her cheeks.

She drew in a breath to explain why she couldn't bring herself to tell him about the stranger in Bess's dad's shop today, or why now, for reasons she couldn't explain, this new guy sleeping peacefully on her sofa caught her attention but found that she couldn't make a voice reach her parted lips.

Frank scooted closer from his spot on the floor to comfort Nancy, sliding his hands up her arms, resting on her forearms.

He glided his strong, firm, and reassuring touch from her fingers to her elbows, and then moved further up to draw her close to his chest so Nancy was practically straddling his lap.

Somehow, maybe she'd been spurned on by Frank's nearness and the intimacy of her boyfriend's reassuring touch, Nancy found the courage to regain control over her voice again.

"Nothing's wrong, Frank. Nothing you have to worry about. Sorry if I scared you," Nancy murmured, still not looking at him.

Frank blinked owlishly at Nancy, pulling back slightly to study his girlfriend's face.

That…that was _not_ his girl's voice. _Yes_ , the words had come from her lips, she'd formed the words herself, but the tone was not Nancy Drew's sweet, shy voice at all. Far from it. Her voice had gone _listless_ , flat, with no emotion whatsoever.

She spoke to Frank just now as though she were trying to keep whatever it was she was feeling out of her voice. Frank felt as though Nancy had poured a bucket of ice water over his head as he felt himself reel backward, feeling as though he'd been hit squarely in the chest with a stray fly ball or something that had succeeded in knocking the wind out of him.

She was still unable to lift her face to meet Frank's. Frank knew that Nancy was blocking him, keeping him away from whatever was on her mind that was causing her so much turmoil.

Something his girlfriend had never done before, not even when they were just friends, back when she was still dating Ned. An abrupt, horrible bitterness seeped its way into the pit of his churning stomach as he thought of Ned Nickerson, Nancy's ex.

_And my friend_ , Frank thought bitterly to himself. Frank felt a rush of raw emotion hit him squarely in his broad chest, rendering him almost unable to move at all: hurt, betrayal, rage. _What in the hell could Nance be hiding from me, then_?

Nancy didn't think she could bring herself to meet Frank's gaze. She had no choice.

She didn't think telling Frank about the man she had encountered today in Bess's father's shop was necessarily a good idea, as it was just a feeling of uneasiness she had. In truth, the stranger with the shades in the shop had done her no harm, hadn't laid a hand on her or anything of the sort.

She didn't want to worry her boyfriend unnecessarily over something so trivial as a gut feeling that was probably nothing. With any luck on her part, she would never see that man again.

So, Nancy couldn't tell Frank. Nancy _hated_ lying, and she wasn't all that great at it, despite having been forced to lie multiple times while during cases, she always felt like her eyes, conveying so much emotion whether she liked it or not, always gave away her discomfort, especially if it were to Frank Hardy, and now that Nancy was actively thinking about it…she'd never lied, not to Frank. Except… _this_. Nancy swallowed down hard.

He couldn't know about the stranger in Bess's dad's shop. What in God's name was she going to tell him, anyway?

_Oh, hey, Frank, well, I ran into a man at Bess's shop today that really gave me the creeps by not saying a word at all_.

Oh, yeah, baby. Like _that_ was going to work. She had nothing to go off of.

The man had done nothing, had literally said _nothing_ to cause Nancy to feel so guarded and suspicious, and now coupled to the fact that they were harboring a stranger on her sofa for the night whose name she and Frank didn't know added to the mounting stress that sent her mind utterly reeling with queries.

As good of a boyfriend as Frank was to her, he would probably, knowing Hardy, grow overly protective of her going forward and him smothering her wasn't what Nancy needed.

If only for that reason alone, she _couldn't_ tell him. Frank's devastating voice laced to the brim with hurt pulled her from the dark swirling vortex of thoughts. "Nothing, Nance? You sure?"

Nancy winced. His voice was sounding like listening to a dog yelp in pain after it had been kicked by its owner who'd up until that point had previously shown no signs of violence towards it.

At the amount of hurt that was evident in Frank Hardy's smooth, melodious voice, rich and quiet, the kind of voice a guy ought to have, Nancy quickly came to the realization that she had cut him just now, had wounded Frank more than anything she could have ever possibly done by not being more forthcoming about her unexpected and frankly, unsettling encounter today.

She briefly wondered, if she were to attempt to confide to Bess and George about what had happened, what they would say.

But then almost immediately as the thought flitted across her mind as a possibility, she dismissed it. Nancy figured the last thing Bess and George would want to hear about, as all three of them were bridesmaids, was how a strange guy dressed in all black had made Nancy feel uneasy, with nothing else to go off of other than that.

Nope. She shook her head to herself in frustration. If she couldn't tell Frank, then she couldn't tell Bess or George, either.

"Frank, I…" Her voice trailed off as she turned to face Frank, only to find that daring to look him in the eyes was almost worse than hearing the injury in his solemn and somber voice.

Frank's pale face was turned away partially from hers, a lock of his thick dark brown hair having tumbled in front of his eyes, effectively shielding the hurt that was plain as day in those dark brown eyes of his from Nancy. His shoulders slumped forward, creating an impossible chasm between the two lovers.

Nancy felt something within her chest start to constrict and tighten, feeling her heart plummet to the hardwood floor beneath where they sat with their backs propped up against the dark sofa.

When Nancy finally summoned strength enough to look at Frank, her shimmering blue eyes were filled with unshed tears. As she slowly raised her face to her boyfriend's, large droplets of water slid from her lids and trailed down her now-ashen cheeks. She couldn't explain the hot shame wallowing in her chest as she looked intently at Frank's affection-filled, yet worried face and her pained expression worried him.

"Can I…ask you something?" she prefaced nervously, twisting the little gold promise ring Frank had given her, a habit whenever she was nervous or thinking about something, Frank had come to learn.

"Anything." Frank smiled at Nancy agreeably, though it was obvious to both of them that his smile was strained, the bags underneath his eyes crinkled as his brow pulled taut with worry.

Unable to meet her boyfriend's gaze, Nancy stared fixated at the new horror movie playing in the background, watching as an overly large alligator ripped a dumb blonde bimbo's arm off.

Under normal circumstances, Nancy would have rolled her eyes and laughed to herself at the sheer stupidity of the women in the horror films she and Frank secretly loved and cherished so much, saying that if she were in their shoes, she'd _never_ behave like that. But right now, laughing was the last thing she felt like doing.

Nancy paused, searching her brain for the right words, careful to phrase what exactly was on her mind. Coupled alongside the onset of anxiety and terror that pricked at her heartstrings from her encounter with that strange creep from the shop today, George had texted her to let her know that Ned was coming to her cousin's wedding tomorrow and would be there.

She had spent most of her shift covering for Bess at the shop ruminating over if Ned would want to talk to her or Frank.

There was a part of her that sincerely hoped not.

"If we…if we happen to run into Ned tomorrow a—at Kate's wedding," she stammered nervously, a light pink blush speckling along her cheeks, "Is it going to…is it going to be a big _problem_ , Frank?"

There. She'd said it. She hadn't really meant to blurt it out that way, but the two men were _friends_ , though admittedly since Ned had dumped Nancy well over a year ago now for another girl and Nancy had steadily started a serious, committed relationship with Frank, his and Ned's friendship had become…well… _strained_.

The two barely talked, though even if their friendship wasn't strained by the fact that Nancy was smack dab in the middle of whatever relationship the two had left, their different school schedules at the colleges they attended left them with little time to connect, with Ned busy with football and Frank with his studies.

Nancy stuck out her bottom lip in a slight pout, hoping she'd not overstepped a boundary by asking this of Frank, and waited for him to speak.

It took him a moment to find his voice. "It won't, Nance, I _promise_ ," he solemnly vowed, lifting his chin and jutting it out slightly defiantly to better meet her gaze.

Nancy swallowed down hard past the lump in her throat, blinking back the tears she fought so hard to keep at bay, not wanting them to spill over, though, at this point, they just might after the stressful day she'd had, and now the nature of their conversation. She tried as hard as she could to compose herself.

"I—I _hurt_ you, Frank," she whispered, her quiet voice betraying the regret she felt when she spoke, still unable to face him, not sure where this sudden confession was coming from. "I _hurt_ you, all those years that I dated Ned, Frank, _didn't_ I?" She could no longer hold back her tears and stiffened when she felt Frank's hands come to rest over hers and grip them tightly.

Nancy flinched and tried gingerly to remove her hands from Frank's ironclad grasp, but her boyfriend wasn't having it, as he was not about to relinquish his grip on either of Nancy's hands.

Frank squeezed onto Nancy's slender fingers even tighter, trying to reassure his girlfriend that he was right here where he was sitting. He wasn't anywhere else, and he hoped never to be.

"Of course, it hurt like hell when you chose…" Frank heard his voice trail off, unwilling to speak Ned's name over his time with Nancy. He vowed instead to show her why none of her past time with Ned Nickerson mattered now, that all he cared about was now. "I _loved_ you, Nan," he smiled, remembering every moment he had watched her hopefully, both up close and from afar, hoping to be in this exact position someday, as Nancy's boyfriend.

And now that Frank Hardy had gotten what he wanted, he knew better than to let Nancy Drew slip through his fingers again.

"Yes, I wanted you to choose me, Nance, but…" Frank paused, unsure of how to continue in a way that would make his girlfriend understand. "It was always _your_ choice to make. I didn't want to force you into this," here, he gestured to himself as if to emphasize his point, "if I wasn't…if I wasn't who you wanted. More than anything, I just wanted you to be _happy_ ," he affirmed. "Even if that meant you were with someone that wasn't _me_ , Nan."

Staring intently at his girlfriend, his vow murmured in his sudden burst of quiet strength attested to his love for Nancy.

Touched by Frank's heartfelt words, Nancy's gaze found Frank's adoring eyes and held them for a good long while before exhaling a slightly shuddering breath through her nostrils.

She was uncertain how to speak the next thought bothering her. Frank was relatively quick to pick up on the sadness that swept over his girlfriend's pale features, and in her bright pale blue eyes again.

"What's the matter, Nance?" he prodded gently, hoping he sounded as unaccusatory as possible. "Please, just tell me." He feared what she might say, the ambiguity of not knowing what her response would be was almost terrifying as Nancy fell silent.

"I—I'm sorry if I _hurt_ you, Frank," she whispered into his shoulder as she flung her arms around Frank Hardy's neck, her hold around his neck tightening.

He fought back a tiny smile as she played with the ends of his dark hair as Nancy continued speaking.

"I—I just…it's _hard_ right now. I—I still don't think I should say anything yet, not until I know for _sure_ , but…please believe me when I tell you there's no one else in the world that I trust more than you, Frank. Love me?"

Frank felt himself give a start at her words as he wound his arms around Nancy's waist.

His heart soared at hearing that there was no one else in her life that Nancy currently trusted more than him, and yet, he still felt disheartened by the fact that she couldn't tell him whatever it was that had her so hot and bothered right now, but at least she had summoned enough courage and inner strength to tell him that there was something bothering her.

Nance just wasn't ready to come to him about it quite just yet. He was going to have to respect her wishes and just wait.

"It's alright, Nance. I'm here for you if you ever wanna talk about it. I'm sorry if I came across as—" he started to say, though Nancy immediately cut him off from his next sentence as she pulled away from him and held Frank at arm's length firmly.

" _Don't_!" she snapped, a harsh bite to her normally kind voice. "You don't have anything to apologize for, Frank."

There was a beat. A pause. She seemed to hesitate, as though weighing options in her mind of whether or not to speak out about it further, when finally, she spoke, and lowered her voice, flinching as the stranger on her sofa gave a start, turning his head, his mouth slightly open, but did not wake up from his deep sleep.

Nancy cringed and turned back to look at Frank, shooting him a pained expression, though she swore the corners of his mouth were twitching back a smile as she met Frank's gaze.

"I…if—if you want the _truth_ , Frank, I guess...I can tell you the truth. It won't do me any good to hide it," she sighed, as her shoulders slumped forward in defeat. "I—I had a weird encounter with a guy at Bess's dad's shop today. The whole thing was…off. He came in wearing these dark sunglasses and never took them off, and never said a _word_ to me or Jake," Nancy whispered in a hushed voice all the while casting a strange, skittish glance at the stranger on her couch, unable to explain the uneasiness wallowing in her soul.

"What happened?" Frank urged his girlfriend to explain in a low, hushed whisper as he looked behind him over his shoulder to ensure the man was still sound asleep. Once he was satisfied he was, only when Frank turned his head back around to look Nancy in the eyes did Nancy continue her story of recounting what happened in Mr. Marvin's shop.

"It—it creeped me out if I'm being honest, and I hope I _never_ run into him again. The guy was a total _creep_ ," she snapped, something dark flitting across her pretty features as she recollected how she swore she felt the guy's eyes rake over her slender form in the middle of the aisle near the barbed wire fencing. "I—I didn't want to worry you about it because he didn't technically do anything _wrong_ other than scare me a little bit, Frank," Nancy admitted quietly, feeling relieved to finally having summoned the courage to talk about it to Frank.

Frank's brows furrowed. "Did you get a good look at him otherwise, Nance? Were you or Jake able to see what he looked like?" he questioned, his detective senses kicking in as his mind struggled to process what his girlfriend had just confessed to him.

His face fell, crestfallen, as Nancy shook her head no, an auburn curl tumbling in front of her face as she did so. "No, but I hope it's nothing for you and me to worry about," she chuckled nervously, failing to stifle a huge yawn with the back of her hand.

Frank wasn't too convinced but didn't want to press the issue with her, supposing he should just feel grateful that Nancy had finally decided to come clean and just tell him the whole truth.

"Well, hopefully, _whoever_ he was, you've seen the last of him," he murmured darkly in a thoughtful tone, glancing at Nancy out of the corner of his eyes, smiling a little as she tried to hide from him how tired she was getting. "You should head to bed, Nance, it's late, we've got a long day ahead of us on the road with this wedding," he muttered.

She nodded, her eyelids already becoming heavy the more tired she became. She moved to stand, though not before a sudden glint seemed to sparkle and ignite within her blue eyes. Nancy pressed her lips against Frank's in a passionate kiss, feeling the tension slowly melt off her body as she relaxed in his warm embrace. As her body calmed, so did her frayed nerves.

She knew she had to put that strange encounter with the man in Bess's dad's store to the darkest corners of her mind. It was in the past, and Frank was here and now, and ensuring the man who they had rescued got on his way in the morning, too.

Her lips were still tingling and quite warm with the aftermath of Frank's passionate kiss as Nancy reluctantly broke apart from him first and bid her boyfriend a shy and quiet goodnight, warm and content, she finally crawled underneath her covers.

Nancy had thought she would be facing another sleepless night, her mind too keyed up by the strange encounter today, and thoughts of the wedding she and Frank were attending tomorrow. However, this was not to be the case and Nancy soon fell into a deep, peaceful sleep, her first tranquil sleep she'd had in a while.

That night, she did not dream of the trauma of past cases. She did not dream of Dwayne Powers or the several instances where she had almost lost her life. She did not dream of the strange fellow clad entirely in black from Bess's dad's shop.

No. Tonight, Nancy Drew dreamed of Frank Hardy, and it was in the middle of her peaceful dream, however, that the dream changed, and the stranger from the sofa was present in her mind.

At some point during the night, Frank, unable to sleep on the cold hardwood floor of Nancy's living room, snuck his way into Nancy's bed and curled up alongside his girlfriend cozily.

It was sometime around three o'clock in the morning that the man awoke from his slumber, and careful not to make a sound, padded in his socks across the hardwood living room floor and crept into Nancy's room and watched the young woman soundly sleep.

Together, Nancy Drew and Frank Hardy were boyfriend and girlfriend, the couple looked so begrudgingly perfect that it made Devin (though they did not yet know his name) want to give everything just to be in that state.

Devin inhaled a sharp breath when Nancy's hand slowly stroked across Frank's dark tangles of hair.

Before she could open her eyes at the perception of the stranger that had slept on her sofa staring at her intimacy with the man in her arms, with the other man's hands draped protectively over her middle in almost a tight vice grip, Devin crept out of the room as swift and silent as a phantom in the night, as though he had never been there in the first place.

When Nancy and Frank woke up in the morning, much to their shock and surprise, the stranger whose life they had managed to save would be gone, his coat where Frank had draped it by the lighted fireplace so it could warm from the elements gone, no sign of his boots that Frank had removed while he'd been knocked out.

There was no evidence that he had been there at all. He'd left no note telling Nancy and Frank thank you, but the man, whoever he was, did leave something in wake of his unexpected departure from her apartment in the middle of the night.

The only sign that the man had been here at all was that of a single white lily, beautiful and pristine, a delicate thing, which rested at the center of the pillow where the man's head had lain.


	5. Chapter 5

**5**

**NANCY** peeked over her shoulder the following morning as the ominous sound of what sounded like something scraping against the concrete of the parking lot of the local seamstresses' shop reached her eardrums and caused the fine hairs on the back of her neck to stand upright on end as she curled her slender fingers over the strap of her dark wine-colored leather purse, fully prepared to use her bag as a weapon, while the garment bag containing her bridesmaid dress for George's cousin's wedding later tonight lay draped over her other arm. She paused to look behind her warily.

Luckily, it was as Frank had predicted this morning and the snowplows had come in the middle of the night and had salted the roads and removed the snow off the streets.

Nancy could have taken her car to the seamstresses', though considering her apartment was literally less than five minutes up the road from the mom-and-pop-owned business, she decided a brisk morning walk in the cool winter air would give her time to clear her head.

Nancy hadn't been able to stop thinking about the man whose life she and Frank had saved last night. How he had woken up and hadn't bothered to call for Nancy or Frank to say he was up, or that he was leaving.

He'd left without a word. No note or anything. Frank at first had been _ticked_ , saying they should have counted themselves lucky that the guy wasn't some kind of thief and they hadn't woken up to find all of Nancy's valuables stolen.

Well, yes, that _was_ true, and Nancy was grateful for that, but more than anything, she was hurt and offended that she had not gotten so much as even a thank you from the stranger for their efforts of bringing him inside and letting him crash on the couch.

_There it is again_! Nancy's eyes widened as she heard the beginning of an ominous whistle, a ditty she thought she knew.

She scanned the streets, searching for anything that would give her some sort of clue as to what—or _who_ —was making that awful, eerie scraping sound.

A couple of cars trolled slowly by, a few women were chatting animatedly as they walked on the same sidewalk that Nancy was on. Nothing out of the ordinary that she could see.

She furrowed her brows, forcing herself to try to breathe normally, and turned back on her heels to keep walking.

Nancy couldn't quite shake the feeling from her senses though like she was being watched. It was an overwhelming and uneasy feeling, one that she was embarrassed to admit she felt.

She wasn't sure if it was coupled with the fact that her encounter with the man from the hardware store had stuck itself like a craw in her mind and refused to let go, frightening her.

Or if was the man whose life she and Frank had saved last night had at some point in the middle of the night, gotten up and walked off and out of her apartment without so much as a word.

_Leaving only the flower in his wake_ , Nancy thought, a little bitter and resentful of the fact he'd not said even thank you.

A scattered sigh managed to escape her slightly chapped and cracked lips as she lazily circled her head down to glance at the delicate flower. The small thing rested in her gloved hand.

In the soft lighting of the early morning, the little flower's colors looked more luscious and brighter than it had early this morning when she'd found it resting on top of the pillow the man had rested his head against during the night.

She wished she knew his name. Not knowing what the stranger's name was, _bothered_ her, wounded her more than his sudden abrupt departure without a word. Nancy exhaled a shaking breath and returned her attention back around to facing front.

The breath rushed in and out of her lungs at a speed that she simply could not control as she wound the purple scarf around her neck to stave off the chill of the brisk winter morning.

Nancy's brows furrowed together as unease fluttered through the pit of her stomach as she turned towards the trees that divided the park from the inner city of River Heights and paused, considering, though she swore she thought she saw a tall, towering silhouette, watching her, _spying_ on her. She shivered.

It was definitely a man given by the silhouette's build and tall, towering figure, though considering he was dressed entirely in black and standing too far away for Nancy to make out any details whatsoever of his facial features, it was hard to see who it was, if it might be someone that she knew, maybe.

Either way, this was really starting to unnerve her. Nancy decided she didn't like it.

_I wish I would have asked Frank to come with me_ , Nancy thought bitterly to herself as she waited with gritted teeth. Now, as she peered over the vast landscape of blinding white as the fresh morning snowfall blanketed the ground, she saw nothing.

The figure that had previously been standing by the tree was gone, but Nancy could see feel the figure's eyes on her, spying. Anyone could be hiding out here like this, waiting for her.

_What if it's the creep from Mr. Marvin's store_? She thought, shaking her head, and letting out a deep breath, curling her fingers into a protective fist over the strap of her purse, hoping she wouldn't have to pelt whoever it was with her bag.

She glanced over across the way on the other end of the sidewalk, closer to the park where the mysterious shadowy figure had been standing. _Bad idea, bad idea, this is a dumb idea, Drew_.

_Why_? Why was she so _stupid_?!

She bit down on the wall of her mouth, wishing she could tell herself as she walked towards the tree where only a fraction of a second ago, the man had been.

As Nancy drew closer and closer towards the tree, she tried her best to lighten her footsteps to avoid her boots making too much noise, just in case whoever happened to be lurking nearby was straining their hearing in order to listen for more sounds.

Her steps became more cautious. If someone was in fact hiding behind this tree, she _really_ didn't want to get jumped. All Nancy had on her to defend herself was a pen to jab in someone's trachea if they forced her to do it, and a small container of mace.

But first, she would have to get into the main compartment of her purse to get at it, and she figured whoever was behind the tree would have no intentions of making it easy for her to get at it.

Drawing in a sharp breath of frigid cold air that pained her lungs, Nancy cautiously poked her head behind the tree, seeing no one. She breathed a tense exhale of relief through her nose, a puff of cold vapor escaping and forming in front of her pink lips.

She gave the area a wide breadth as she circled the spot where she thought she'd seen the intruder. The shadowy figure from before was nowhere to be found, but she did find a pair of boot impressions in the snow.

Nancy had surmised the figure to be a man from the distance a moment ago when she had first spotted him, but she hadn't been sure until right now as she stared.

Nancy glanced at the man's boot prints and gingerly placed her foot next to the stranger's footprint, studying her black heeled leather boots. She wore a size 8 shoe, and this print was a little more than double the size of her own foot. It unnerved her.

Nancy blinked owlishly down at the footprint. Well, whoever the print belonged to, there wasn't a shadow of doubt in her mind now. It was definitely a guy's print, and a tall one, too.

She swallowed down hard past a growing lump in her throat. Nancy had definitely had her fair share of run-ins with some royal creeps in times past, especially while on a case, but nothing quite like a man who hid behind trees stalking women.

"Whoever you are, guy, you're a _special_ kind of weird, aren't you?" Nancy murmured bitterly under her breath to whoever left behind these boot prints in the snow by the tree.

What happened next, even Nancy couldn't bring herself to discern what compelled her to rummage into her coat pocket to grope and fumble for her cell phone to take a picture of the boot print, but she decided it couldn't hurt to take a picture of her foot alongside the mysterious footprints in the snow from the man.

She highly doubted anything would come of it, but in her line of work, she'd made more than a few enemies, more than she or Frank could count, and if Nancy Drew knew one thing about the nature of human beings, it was that someone could be just as prone to violent outbursts as someone could be to bursts of kindness and charity.

And if anything did happen to her here while she walked back to her apartment, she could at least give the cops some kind of direction (much to Chief Terry McGinnis' dismay) if she were forced to call the police if she ran into the man. Nancy hated to admit it, but she'd never been overly fond of the police.

They never took her seriously when she tried to over her help or input. But she knew the police force had a purpose, and that many of them were heroes, putting their lives on the line and wonderful people, but McGinnis sure wasn't one of them.

Nancy shook her head to herself and let a nervous chuckle escape her lips as she slid the strap of her purse to her other shoulder to ease the ache in her one arm from having to carry her dress's stupid garment bag almost a whole block back to her flat.

She headed through the trees towards the street. There had always been something about wooded areas that never ceased to make Nancy feel a little bit anxious, but the trees in River Heights' local city park had been planted far enough apart that Nancy never usually felt the need to suffer from one of her panic attacks.

Either way, it didn't matter how far apart the trees were spaced, it didn't stop the nineteen-year-old from feeling like she was treading on eggshells until she managed to clear them completely.

What sounded to her like chunks of ice being kicked coming from somewhere behind her caused Nancy to startle at the noise, whirling around on the heel of her boot, only to find a curious little squirrel bounding from one tree and onto the next.

Though the moment Nancy turned back around, chuckling nervously to herself while at the same time cursing herself for being so jumpy lately, a quiet crunching of snow and ice underfoot came from somewhere behind her, sending spiraling anxiety flaring in the pit of her stomach and she swallowed down hard.

_Oh, boy_. Nancy peeked cautiously over her shoulder, but there was nothing behind her, save for the trees and the squirrel.

She knew she was going to only succeed in psyching herself out and sending her mind insane if she continued to imagine men lurking in the shadows and behind the trees, _spying_ on her. The man who she thought had been watching her a few minutes ago, and the guy from Bess's dad's hardware shop unnerved her more than Nancy would ever care to admit.

Frank so far had been the only one in their circle she'd told. Not Bess or George or Joe, though she could only surmise at some point Joe being Frank's younger brother would know the truth, as there wasn't much that Frank kept from his little brother. She guessed probably today if she got a chance, Nancy would have to talk to Bess and George.

Nancy continued to trudge and slough her way through the snow, shuffling along at a slower pace than perhaps she would have liked in the event the sidewalk happened to be coated with black ice.

Though before she could take a left turn and cross the street, a loud shrill whistling noise shattered the eerie quiet of this chilly December morning, causing Nancy to yelp in surprise and clamp a hand over her frantic, racing heart.

It took her a moment to catch her breath and calm down before she realized the noise had come from her phone and had come from her left coat pocket.

She let out an exasperated little groan as the sigh escaped her lips of her own overreaction and grabbed her phone, hitting 'accept' as Bess's name flashed across the screen, almost impatiently.

Nancy sighed, pursing her lips in a thin line as she held her phone up to her ear. "I see you're feeling better, Bess," Nancy chirped in what she hoped was a cheerful-enough voice and hid the worst of her uneasiness towards her vulnerability.

"I am, thanks for asking!" came Bess's sunny voice. "I was just calling to see if you and Frank wanted to grab breakfast on the way to the lodge. I can order and pay over the phone and you can pick it up on the way home. It's on your way over, right?"

"Yup. Frank and I will be there in less than thirty minutes," Nancy promised. "See you soon, Bess, I gotta go. I walked to the seamstress's today to pick up my dress and it's cold out here."

Bess quickly said goodbye, saying she'd see her and Frank soon as Nancy disconnected the call and plunked her phone back into her coat pocket. No sooner had she done that than something huge and furry brushed against her leg, eliciting a startled shriek from Nancy as she whirled around on the heels of her black boots.

A huge black dog, a breed she didn't immediately recognize, had come up behind her and was affectionately nuzzling the back of Nancy's legs, seemingly a ploy for attention.

It caught her so off guard, that her legs twisted in her effort to maintain control over her equilibrium, and like a toddler discovering how to walk upright for the first time, Nancy felt her knees give out beneath her and she fell into a tangled heap of limbs, face-first onto the concrete. The dog had caused her to trip.

"What…?" she breathed, wide-eyed, her heart pounding against her chest, a hand wildly clutching at her heart in the hopes of calming it down. Nancy felt her shoulders relax as her gaze landed on a huge black dog. "Oh, it must have been you, boy."

Nancy furrowed her thin brows into a frown as she took a cautious half-step closer towards the dog, whose tail was wagging.

"Where's your collar, huh, boy? What's your name? And why isn't your master around? Are you all alone out here?" Nancy murmured, feeling the dog's gnarled and matted fur, furrowing her eyebrows as a frown flitted across her pale face at whoever would treat their poor dog in such a despicable way.

His fur was matted and tangled, dried, and congealed with bits of what felt suspiciously like blood, and Nancy shuddered, hoping the dog didn't have fleas, and as she moved her hands along his ribcage, the poor thing shivered, and she could tell the dog hadn't eaten a good square meal in days, maybe even weeks as she could feel the dog's bony ribcages sticking outright.

She couldn't be sure, but she swore as the dog nuzzled the top of his face with her palm that the dog preened a little at her voice. _Odd_.

Nancy let out a haggard sigh, looking towards the sidewalk, knowing she needed to get going, sensing the shadow of the dog's movements behind her as the poor creature started to follow her.

"No, no, no, you _can't_ come with me! The landlord where I live _hates_ dogs! I've got nowhere to put you, and if you follow me into my apartment then you're just going to give me the sack!" she snapped, turning back at the waist to glower at the black dog.

The dog's previously perked-up ears drooped, and the low, pitiful whine that emitted from deep within its chest was just enough to send a pang of guilt through Nancy's heart.

She huffed in frustration, stomping her foot on the ground, and pinched at the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger, thinking she'd been bloody lucky not to be hurt even worse than a few scrapes and bruises, though a cut along her left browbone was trickling blood, and her shoulders felt bruised and very sore.

Nancy rolled her neck to crack it, desperately trying to ignore the swelling pain and overall aching feeling of her entire body. She moaned as the dog let out another truly pitiful whine, nuzzling her hand with its long snout.

She let out a sigh, unable to shake the feeling like she was going to really regret doing this.

"Fine, _fine_ , I guess you and I are partners for the day, huh? You can stay for one night back at my place, but in the morning, you're gone!" Nancy let out a low, agonized groan as she resisted the urge to roll her eyes. "A good boy like you is sure to have someone come looking for you. I _hope_. I sure _hope_ that's the case because our flat doesn't allow dogs, buddy."

She _swore_ the dog preened at the compliment, though she scoffed and rolled her eyes. "I don't see a collar on you, or anybody chasing after you, boy," she grumbled, a fiery heat creeping to her cheeks as she realized she must have hit her head harder than she thought if she was actually holding a conversation with a _dog_.

Nancy had never considered herself the type of person who would actually talk to their pets. Nancy let out a frustrated groan.

"I must have hit my head harder than I thought if I'm talking to you now and half-expecting that you can answer me."

The dog's ears perked up, and he made an odd noise at the back of his throat that almost— _almost_ —sounded like he agreed.

"C'mon, boy, you and I are going home. I'll just have to find a way to sneak you into the complex somehow and hope Mr. Murry doesn't find out or else he'll kick me out," Nancy grumbled to the dog under her breath.

She scrunched her nose in disgust as she thought of Murry, the building's landlord who was frankly, beyond all hope. She was already on edge with Murry as it was, and the last thing she and Frank needed was for Mr. Murry to need a final excuse to look to evict them, and then they would be homeless, and she flat out refused to move back in with her father.

As Nancy shook her head to clear her mind, the dog trailing happily alongside her, its ears perked up and every so often, the black beast would wag its tail, despite looking like it was sore from being toppled over by Nancy too when she'd fallen.

A pang of guilt wormed its way into her churning stomach as Nancy noticed the dog was limping. It didn't seem too bothered by it though, which she guessed was a good thing, though if the dog had an owner, that was going to be a tough thing to explain away, and she cursed herself for thinking this next thought, but she sincerely hoped that if whoever _did_ happen to own this dog, if he wasn't a stray, did come looking for their missing pet and found him, that they would take pity on Nancy and Frank and not ask the two of them to try to chip in for the medical bills, considering the two of them were still in college.

This thought plagued her mind. Nancy hated thinking along these lines, but this was the reality of her and her Frank's situation.

Nancy couldn't be sure as she made to walk back in the direction that she had come from, but she swore she felt like she was being followed as an odd whistling sound that hadn't been there before, rent the air.

The young woman froze, the dog halting alongside her too as she looked behind her, tracking the sound of the horrible whistling, her face draining of color as a tall, thin man stepped out from behind the trees.

He whistled softly in a seemingly non-threatening way as he dragged his feet leisurely through the fallen dead leaves.

Nancy swallowed thickly as the stranger stopped directly between Nancy and her path back home and cocked his head to the side.

"Catchy tune, little dove, wouldn't you say?" he asked. His voice was deep and gravelly, his thin, wormy lips curved into a smile, though there was something about the man's eyes that sent a tingle of warning all through Nancy's nervous system.

The moment she heard the dog let out a low warning growl, that was when the realization hit her full force that this was not a young man simply wandering the streets of downtown River Heights Nancy could trust.

The first thing Nancy noticed about the stranger was his hair, of all features. His dark hair was a vibrant shade of jet-black, almost like the color of ink, looking like he'd spilled a bottle of ink onto his hair.

Pulled back into a low ponytail, it gave him somewhat of an impressive appearance. His boots were leather, looking like they were made of snakeskin of some kind, and he was dressed entirely in black, though the man's eyes were a smoldering pit of fathomless deep brown, the likes of which she'd not seen before.

Nancy tried to appear casual as she took a slow step back, the dog following her movements, not leaving her side, though the beast kept its teeth bared, gums pulled back in a snarl.

"I see you've found my missing _doggy_ , how… _kind_ of you. I been tracking this one a _long_ time, little dove," he grinned as he proceeded to pluck a leaf from one of the low-hanging limbs near his head and turned it over thoughtfully in his calloused hands.

Judging by the way the dog to her left was currently growling at the stranger that was now rapidly advancing on her, Nancy highly doubted the man in front of her was this poor black dog's owner.

Nancy swallowed nervously as the man lifted his gaze to hers and flicked the dead leaf away carelessly with a practiced flick of his finger, his features hardening considerably as he glared at Nancy.

Fear twisted through her stomach as a coil in her gut gave a painful lurch as she continued to back away from him, not really sure where she was going, or what she thought she was going to do.

She looked to the left and right for any sign of a nearby cop. None. Nancy stifled a low, agonized moan.

_Just great_. Nancy gritted her teeth and squeezed her eyes shut.

Nancy sucked in a startled breath as she stumbled backward over her own feet, cursing herself for her sudden clumsiness.

Her gaze shifted between the snarling dog at her side and the man advancing on them, his eyes narrowed until they were mere slits, reminding her of a panther stalking its prey in the shadows.

"Look, I—I don't have anything to _give_ you," she began, hating the quiet tremor that was warbling in her voice, seeping its way unbidden to the surface. "I don't have any money with me. I don't carry a whole lot of cash. Less than twenty bucks, guy."

"I don't _want_ your wallet, sweetheart, I don't want your money, dollface," the man who Nancy decided to call the Whistling Man for now, unless he gave his name, declared, sending Nancy into a state of confusion.

_Then what do you want_? Nancy blinked owlishly at the tall, stocky man, momentarily taken aback, and forgetting the danger of her precarious situation. Nausea wormed its way through the walls of her stomach as the words he'd just spouted sank in.

This _wasn't_ a mugging, then. The only two things remaining that this creep could possibly want from her, well, Nancy was not at all willing to give it up.

_Mom_? She begged silently to the heavens, hoping that somehow, wherever Mom was, God bless her soul, she was watching out for her even now. She couldn't form the thoughts she needed, but she hoped that she would be able to understand.

Nancy at this point fully expected panic to set in and take over, though the moment she felt a familiar icy resolve slide beneath her skin, was the exact second she realized she needed to run.

"Wh—what _do_ you _want_ then?" she managed to gasp out, thinking it strange that instead of panicking, she was quite calm.

Though she suspected it was this familiar icy coldness, the barrier that protected her when the pain and fear became too much, whenever things around her and Frank would happen that she couldn't explain, and her boyfriend didn't seem to want to entertain the idea that something was amiss, much less talk to Nancy of it all.

The stranger let a dark little chuckle escape from his lips as he raised his hands in front of him to showcase a mock surrender.

"Just to have a little _chat_ , miss," he continued speaking in a smooth, languid baritone. "And to get my dog back, dear…"

Nancy found herself surveying the area as he quickly moved to close in around her and the strange stray black dog she'd fallen on top of. There was no _way_ on God's green earth she was going to be able to skirt past this creep and into the apartment complex, no way. She didn't want him knowing where she lived.

Even if she did manage to somehow escape through the park, there was nothing to stop them from catching her and dragging her to some quiet, undisclosed place, where if she let that happen, then she'd really be in a spot of serious trouble, then, wouldn't she?

She knew her chances of escaping were virtually impossible.

This strange dark-haired Whistling Man, as Nancy had decided to call the guy was probably a foot or two taller than her, at best, 6'2 maybe, and he moved like a professional athlete, his movements so quick they were almost a blur, and his strides lithe.

Nancy swallowed hard at the lump that had formed in her throat as it hollowed and constricted, rendering her feeling lightheaded and rather dizzy as the stranger approached, his movements careful and precise, despite the black dog's savage growling and barking, the man-made no attempts to back off.

She exhaled shakily through her nose as she had to accept the fact that this man had intentions to hurt her, and maybe the dog. And that she would escape if she had a chance—she would survive—but if nothing else came of it, she would try her hardest to make sure this guy regretted choosing her to take advantage of.

"Don't you even _think_ about rabbiting off somewhere, doll," the dark-eyed man barked in a hoarse voice. "You look cagey, Miss Nancy," he grumbled, and hearing her surname from this man's thin wormy lips chilled Nancy's blood to ice in her veins.

_Oh, God_.

"Y—you know my _name_?" she breathed, her eyes making a quick scan of the man's towering form, desperately trying to commit every detail of the man's face to her memory.

Just in case she had to give a description to the cops later. She wracked her brain trying to remember if she had met him before.

She didn't recognize him. Had he hit on her or something and she'd rejected him, and he'd come back to take what was his?

"I _do_ , sweetheart," he confirmed, those listless blue eyes of his once more sending a chill down her spine. "Let's just say I know your _daddy_. Carson and I go back a _long_ way, little Nancy. You might even call your father a former _friend_ ," he grinned maliciously.

Though at the mention of her father, even in passing like this, it did not escape her attention how his facial expression soured, the crinkling of his nose as if he'd smelled something rotten.

"Look, guy, please don't _do_ this," Nancy begged, and her voice came out far steadier than it had a moment ago, which she thought was strange, hearing the shift within her tone of voice.

Maybe it was her newfound coldness in her blood that was giving her strength or the fact that the black dog that she'd hit must have taken a liking to her, for it stepped in front of her and snarled, its hackles raised, poised to lung at the man if this dark-haired, shifty-eyed stranger so much as made one move at Nancy.

Nancy continued to retreat, discreetly sliding her fingers underneath the strap of her purse, sliding the bag off her shoulder, fully prepared to pelt the creep and make a run for it.

"I promise, doll, this won't hurt you, I'll make it quick and painless for you. Just give me my _dog_ here, and no one will get hurt. But if you _don't_ , then well…" the dark-eyed man said, shrugging his shoulders and shooting her a bone-chilling grin.

Nancy bristled, grinding her teeth in annoyance, feeling grateful the dog hadn't budged an inch even as the man advanced on them.

_Someone ought to let him know he's a terrible liar_. _Might as well be me if this is the only chance I get to tell this creep this_.

"You're...you're a terrible liar, you _jerk_! You know that, right?" Nancy snapped meanly, her temper getting the better of her as her unbridled fear began to manifest itself as anger bubbling deep within the pits of her churning stomach.

The dark-haired man grinned. "Yeah?" He made a motion of stretching out his hand as though to caress Nancy's cheek, and she slid the strap of her bag off her shoulder and swung the bag in one swift movement at the exact same time the black dog bounded forward, latching its powerful jaws around his arm.

The hit was a powerful one as her bag smashed into the guy's face, squashing his nose, and Nancy barely managed to repress her victorious grin as she heard his nose break, thanking God she'd thought to pack the leftover Thermos of hot chocolate she'd been intending to drink on the walk home following her appointment at the seamstresses' shop.

The thing was heavy and packed a heck of a hit, she could tell the thing made an impact by the sickeningly satisfying crunch of the little bones in the man's nose breaking, and a steady stream of crimson erupted from both of his nostrils as the man hollered and roared like that of an enraged bull or even a dragon in those fantasy movies Nancy loved to watch so much on the weekends.

"You—you broke my nose, you—you little _witch_!" he bellowed, his voice muffled by his hands now cupped over his face, his fingers slowly staining red with the man's own blood.

A tiny flicker of relief washed over Nancy as she saw blinding tears welling in her eyes and streaming down his gaunt cheeks. It would definitely slow him down, give her time to run for it.

Nancy turned on the heel of her boot just as a loud, ear-piercing scream shattered the air behind her, and she could tell without even having to turn her head and look that the black dog that she had seemed to have made friends with a split second ago had sunken its sharp teeth into the man's arm.

" **GOD! GET HIM OFF OF ME! GET IT OFF**!" he screamed.

Nancy scrambled backward through the leaves as the fight between her would-be-attacker and the dog came even closer.

The man balled his strong hand into a fist and hit the dog in the side of the head. The black dog whimpered and reared back, though the animal quickly recovered, his jaws going straight for the man's throat.

Nancy squeezed her eyes shut as a muffled scream rent the air, along with the startled cries of a few passersby in the park, in shock and horrified at what was going on.

Nancy opened her eyes, not wanting to look at the worst of it, and was grateful that by the time her gaze landed on him, he had retreated a few feet away, so she could not see the extent of the damage of the dog's mauling that her savior dog had given him. The man stumbled to his feet and fled through the park, running as fast as possible until he disappeared from Nancy's sight.

Nancy parted her lips open to scream for someone, anyone to call the cops so the authorities could come and arrest this creep, though she didn't get the chance as she heard the unmistakable sound of the stranger swearing at the top of his lungs as he tripped behind a particularly thick bush covered in thorns and he remained on the ground and didn't bother to get up a second time.

The dog bolted as though to run after the man, though a loud shout, coming from somewhere behind him, made the dog stop in its tracks, turning to look at the voice, almost… _weary_. Nancy blinked owlishly at the animal's behavior.

_What is WITH this dog_?! Though before she could mull it over further in her mind, a startled shout came from behind her.

" **TOBY**!" came a man's hoarse voice, his tone sounding clipped and angered beyond belief.

Nancy felt the familiar stab of a fear prick at her heartstrings as she looked behind her and to the left for the source of the new voice belonging to yet _another_ male stranger alone with Nancy in the park, thinking that if she had one stranger encounter today, then she might just lose her mind.

Nancy was panting and gasping raged, short spurts of breaths as her lungs burned, though the purity of the cold oxygen as she desperately inhaled what air she could in the hopes of preventing passing out felt like it stung and nipped at her throat.

At first, black spots crept towards the edges of her vision as a sickening sense of nausea at what she had narrowly escaped crept through her veins, out of focus, only able to pick up basic shapes and colors.

Blinking rapidly to try to rid her vision of the horrible thoughts that threatened to blind her and send her into a dark chasm of oblivion if she were to pass out here on the sidewalk, Nancy stared off into the direction her would-be attacker had fled, still way too stunned to manage to speak at all.

The man's voice, sounding hoarse from misuse, reached her eardrums, but whoever he was, he sounded faint and muffled.

"I'm sorry, miss, that—that's the third time Toby's gotten away from me in a month. Was that _you_ who screamed?" he asked.

But Nancy couldn't answer the guy quite just yet sadly. She was too focused on regulating her breaths back to normal, keeping her eyelids squeezed shut, trying not to vomit. The shapes and colors of the park and the sidewalk around her and this new strangely slowly but surely cleared into something of recognition.

Or rather more accurately, a _someone_.

Nancy's eyes widened slightly at the sight of the man. She recognized it.

She wondered if it was _him_ , as he was still too far away to make out any distance of his face from this distance, though the excitement within her was quickly growing rapidly, despite the man's shoulders practically heaving with fury as his dog had gotten away from him as he approached Nancy slowly.

Nancy allowed a cautious smile to flit across her features as she recognized the man's deep brown eyes.

It was the stranger whose life she and Frank had saved last night.

As he lifted his gaze to meet her eyes, his brown eyes widened in a look of abject shock and horror, and maybe even a little embarrassment as his cheeks flushed bright pink with shame as he quickly reverted his piercing gaze.

Nancy felt a small stab of excitement prick at her heartstrings. Maybe now, she'd finally know the guy's name. But a small pang of hesitation rested within her as well, remembering how the guy had pretty much left without a trace.

" _You_ ," she breathed in an awestruck, breathless voice. "I—I thought that…Frank and I wouldn't see you again after…last night. You—you left without a word to either of us. _Why_?"

The anxious young woman nervously wrang her hands, biting down on her bottom lip as a cold gust of wind blew her red hair off her shoulders while she waited for the man to say something.

She could tell she'd embarrassed him by asking, that the guy hadn't expected he would run into Nancy again, for sure. She noticed the stranger's shoulders stiffen, but they relaxed the moment Nancy took a small step forward, her bridesmaid dress's garment bag swaying in the winter breeze.

"I—I didn't want to…to wake you a—and I didn't know how I could…possibly thank you for…for _everything_ ," the nervous man stammered in his rough, coarse, and hoarse voice that she couldn't quite explain it, but it sent a brief chill down her spine.

It didn't take Nancy long to realize she was staring. God, but she was being _rude_.

She knew she was the _last_ person to talk about manners, but neither had she expected that her unexpected savior here in the park who'd unknowingly come to her rescue by chasing after his escaped dog would be the same guy from last night.

She allowed a small smile to rest on her pale features.

"It's good to see you again. I hope you're feeling better," she said, as Nancy took a cautious half step closer to try to meet the man's deep umber brown eyes a little bit better, now that it was daylight and Nancy could get a proper look at this stranger.

She stepped forward in what she hoped wasn't a suffocating way, not sure how to thank the guy for saving her life.

In a way, Nancy guessed they were even now.

The thirty-year-old man flicked his eyes up to meet Nancy's, and the sight before him was a little more than just relaxing. It was peaceful.

The young redhead was framed by the light of the winter sun behind her, the sun rays causing a faint halo around her head.

Her friendly smile and eyes calmed whatever raging nerves that had nestled within him prior. The man searched her face for any sign of fear or hesitation but couldn't find any, and he _knew_.

She was the _one_. The last phrase the woman had said was swimming through his mind until the man felt like it was reeling. Nancy Drew really _did_ look happy to see him, and that in it of itself was a foreign thing for him to hear.

"Well, I—it is…" he trailed off for a moment, unsure of what to say to the girl, for he'd hardly had this type of interaction with many people, especially women, " _nice_ to see you a—as well, Nancy. If you're not hurt," he answered, and made to turn on the heels of his boots to leave her.

Goddamn, but his heart was racing.

He felt a muscle in his jaw twitch just thinking how her brilliant blue eyes sparkled in the sun, catching all the colors of the atmosphere around them.

His face, he was sure, held a dumbfounded expression. All his life, his parents had kept him sequestered once they found out about his…urges, it started with the killing of small defenseless animals, deeming them unclean and wrong. _Sinful_.

The man swallowed. But this woman hadn't. The pretty, beautiful, compassionate young woman named Nancy Drew had saved his life, had helped him earlier that same day in the hardware store, and had just looked upon him as if he were normal, like anyone else. A warm feeling rested in his heart as he heard her voice.

"Wait!" Her voice carried almost a slight desperate lilt to it that gave him pause as he made to tug his dog, Toby, back home.

The man froze, shifting slightly at the waist and peering cautiously over his shoulder as a hesitant smile played on his face. God, but her smile was simply contagious.

The man could only nod at Nancy Drew, thinking it utterly adorable how the girl had this habit of biting down on her bottom lip when thinking.

"You could at _least_ tell me your _name_ , sir, don't you think you owe it to me for helping you out last night?" Nancy asked, giving him a fast wink.

She could actually see him blushing this time, unaware of the fiery heat that crept between his legs and was threatening to send his mind insane if he didn't do something. He had to get out of here before he ruined everything.

It…it wasn't _time_ yet. Still. He could owe it to her to be kind. Earning her trust was surely the only way to win her love.

"Devin." His voice was only above a whisper, and hoarse from lack of use. His heart was hammering inside of his broad chest, and Devin quickly became paranoid that Nancy Drew could hear it for herself. He took in a hitched breath as he stared back.

Nancy felt her heart flutter unexpectedly as his soft smile caught her completely by surprise. The stranger from her sofa really _did_ look better when he smiled, Nancy thought contently.

No matter how long and hard he looked at her, Devin couldn't find a single strand of distaste or fear in her azure irises.

"Thank you." His head was spinning from the blood that was rushing to his cheeks.

Goddamn it, he really needed a minute.

"I'll see you later maybe around town sometime," he managed to croak out.

Nancy held back a gasp as she watched the slightly older man stumble not only his words but his dog, as well as the huge black dog whose name she now knew, was Toby bounded forward, almost causing Devin's legs to become entangled in the spare leash he'd brought, just as Nancy had fallen on her face earlier.

She pressed her cheek into her palm, a weirdly affectionate smile sneaking its way back onto her face as she stood there. Nancy was grateful at least, that her mystery man had a name and he had told her.

He flipped the hood of his coat back over his face to no doubt take himself and his dog back home, wherever the man lived, all the while talking to his dog, Toby.

Nancy couldn't be sure, but she could have sworn Devin looked back at her a couple of times before disappearing around the bend and out of her line of sight.

_What a day_ , she thought to herself anxiously as she stared after the strange man for a second, before giving her head a curt little shake to clear her mind and turned on the heels of her boots and quickened her pace to go home.

Frank was waiting for her and they needed to get going. Unbeknownst to Nancy, Devin was watching her from behind the corner of a building near a side alleyway he'd ducked behind and was watching the young woman head back home.

He was thinking the exact same thought that she was. _What a day…I can't wait to see you again, Nancy. We're going to have such a good life together._

_You'll see._


End file.
